CVE-2026-12523

HIGHCVSS 7.5/10EPSS 0.29%

Last modified

CVE-2026-12523 is a high-severity vulnerability rated 7.5/10 on the CVSS scale. Summary Cloudflare quiche's HTTP/3 layer was discovered to be vulnerable to resource exhaustion (i.e., memory) by means of specially crafted HTTP/3 frames. Impact HTTP/3 defines multiple frame types to support HTTP message exchanges and connection management. Each frame has a length and a payload whose length depends on the frame type. EPSS estimates a 0.29% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Description

Summary Cloudflare quiche's HTTP/3 layer was discovered to be vulnerable to resource exhaustion (i.e., memory) by means of specially crafted HTTP/3 frames. Impact HTTP/3 defines multiple frame types to support HTTP message exchanges and connection management. Each frame has a length and a payload whose length depends on the frame type. quiche was found to be vulnerable when parsing some frame types to pre-allocating memory based on the declared length. An attacker would not need to send the number of declared bytes to trigger this issue. In addition, quiche was found to not apply QPACK decompression limits correctly. This could allow an attacker to send specially crafted HEADERS frames that would cause more memory commitment than otherwise advertised by MAX_FIELD_SECTION_SIZE (configured by set_max_field_section_size()). Mitigation: * Users are requested to upgrade to quiche 0.29.3 which is the earliest version containing the fix for this issue. Credits: Disclosed responsibly by Sébastien Féry

Metrics

CVSS 3.1
7.5/10

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

EPSS Probability
0.29%

21.4th percentile

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. Learn more

Weakness Enumeration

Affected Software

VendorProductVersions
CloudflareQuiche>= 0.1.0, < 0.29.3

References

Timeline

Published
Last Modified
Status
Analyzed

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-12523?
Summary Cloudflare quiche's HTTP/3 layer was discovered to be vulnerable to resource exhaustion (i.e., memory) by means of specially crafted HTTP/3 frames. Impact HTTP/3 defines multiple frame types to support HTTP message exchanges and connection management. Each frame has a length and a payload whose length depends on the frame type. quiche was found to be vulnerable when parsing some frame types to pre-allocating memory based on the declared length. An attacker would not need to send the number of declared bytes to trigger this issue. In addition, quiche was found to not apply QPACK decompression limits correctly. This could allow an attacker to send specially crafted HEADERS frames that would cause more memory commitment than otherwise advertised by MAX_FIELD_SECTION_SIZE (configured by set_max_field_section_size()). Mitigation: * Users are requested to upgrade to quiche 0.29.3 which is the earliest version containing the fix for this issue. Credits: Disclosed responsibly by Sébastien Féry
How severe is CVE-2026-12523?
CVE-2026-12523 has a CVSS score of 7.5/10 (HIGH severity). The EPSS model estimates a 0.29% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days.
How do I fix CVE-2026-12523?
Check the vendor references and advisories linked above for patched versions and mitigation guidance. You can also run a Strix scan to test if your systems are affected.

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Source: NVD / NIST