--- id: CVE-2026-54874 title: |- Issue summary: Receiving a DTLS record for a future epoch while a handshake is in progress causes OpenSSL to buffer far more memory than the record itself requires. Impact summary: A peer can use a small amount of network traffic to mak… summary: |- Issue summary: Receiving a DTLS record for a future epoch while a handshake is in progress causes OpenSSL to buffer far more memory than the record itself requires. Impact summary: A peer can use a small amount of network traffic to mak… severity: high cvss: 7.5 cvssVector: 'CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H' cwe: - CWE-405 vendor: openssl product: openssl affected: - 'openssl >= 1.0.2, < 1.0.2zr' - 'openssl >= 1.1.1, < 1.1.1zi' - 'openssl >= 3.0.0, < 3.0.22' - 'openssl >= 3.4.0, < 3.4.7' - 'openssl >= 3.5.0, < 3.5.8' - 'openssl >= 3.6.0, < 3.6.4' - 'openssl >= 4.0.0, < 4.0.2' patched: - openssl 4.0.2 published: '2026-08-25' updated: '2026-09-11' sourceUpdated: '2026-09-11T21:16:28.067' source: NVD sourceUrl: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-54874' references: - url: >- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/4808b5d64176451f3d93d87d0ac9c81a9b13fb23 label: openssl-security@openssl.org - url: >- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/7110cb2f75806d0bf809eb2f90790d477900be40 label: openssl-security@openssl.org - url: >- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/a0c8ec557d9cac078f032d76cdf684fe743eb382 label: openssl-security@openssl.org - url: >- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/cc0c6710917cd5eec001b297355d2ba723505107 label: openssl-security@openssl.org - url: >- https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/f52ffc11b90737ac89083909618dc2e1f42c561c label: openssl-security@openssl.org - url: 'https://openssl-library.org/news/secadv/20260825.txt' label: openssl-security@openssl.org - url: >- https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-54874.json - url: 'https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-54874' - url: 'https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2517564' - url: 'https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-54874' - url: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-54874' - url: 'https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:67154' - url: 'https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:67165' - url: 'https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:59641' - url: 'https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:59635' - url: 'https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:67956' tags: - nvd - csaf - vex - red-hat epss: 0.00524 epssPercentile: 0.43401 ingestedAt: '2026-09-12T00:03:49.031Z' --- ## Overview Issue summary: Receiving a DTLS record for a future epoch while a handshake is in progress causes OpenSSL to buffer far more memory than the record itself requires. Impact summary: A peer can use a small amount of network traffic to make an OpenSSL DTLS endpoint retain a disproportionately large amount of memory, which may lead to a Denial of Service. CWE: CWE-405: Asymmetric Resource Consumption (Amplification) Description: While a DTLS handshake is in progress, a peer may legitimately have already moved on to the next epoch (for example, having sent its ChangeCipherSpec and Finished messages) before the local endpoint has processed the same transition, typically because of reordering on the underlying UDP transport. OpenSSL buffers such early records so that they can be processed once the local endpoint catches up. Buffering a record currently retains the entire read buffer it arrived in, which is sized to hold the largest possible DTLS record (around 16 kilobytes), rather than just the bytes that make up the record itself. Up to 100 such records may be buffered per connection. As a result, a peer that sends a stream of small forged records claiming to belong to the next epoch can cause an OpenSSL DTLS endpoint to retain around 1.7 megabytes of memory, despite sending only a small fraction of that amount of data over the network. An attacker therefore gains a memory amplification factor of around 1200, and can multiply the effect across as many associations as it is able to open, making this a remote memory exhaustion Denial of Service risk for DTLS servers. Since the memory retained per connection remains bounded, and any limit an application already places on the number of concurrent associations also bounds the total exposure, this issue has been assessed as Low severity. FIPS impact: no No FIPS modules are affected by this issue as the affected code is outside the OpenSSL FIPS module boundary. OpenSSL 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.0, 1.1.1 and 1.0.2 are vulnerable to this issue. OpenSSL 4.0 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 4.0.2. OpenSSL 3.6 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.6.4. OpenSSL 3.5 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.5.8. OpenSSL 3.4 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.4.7. OpenSSL 3.0 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 3.0.22. Premium support customers only: OpenSSL 1.1.1 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 1.1.1zi OpenSSL 1.0.2 users should upgrade to OpenSSL 1.0.2zr This issue was reported on 18 May 2026 by Amazon Web Services. The fix has been developed by Matt Caswell. -- cut (non-publishing metadata for internal use) -- Reported by: Amazon Web Services Fixed by: Matt Caswell ## Affected - `openssl >= 1.0.2, < 1.0.2zr` - `openssl >= 1.1.1, < 1.1.1zi` - `openssl >= 3.0.0, < 3.0.22` - `openssl >= 3.4.0, < 3.4.7` - `openssl >= 3.5.0, < 3.5.8` - `openssl >= 3.6.0, < 3.6.4` - `openssl >= 4.0.0, < 4.0.2` ## Remediation Upgrade past the affected range: - `openssl 4.0.2` ## Vendor advisories - **RHSA-2026:67154** · Red Hat · fixed in: Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 10), Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 10) · released 2026-09-14 · [advisory](https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:67154) - **RHSA-2026:67165** · Red Hat · fixed in: Red Hat Enterprise Linux AppStream (v. 9), Red Hat Enterprise Linux BaseOS (v. 9) · released 2026-09-14 · [advisory](https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:67165) - **RHSA-2026:59641** · Red Hat · fixed in: Red Hat Hardened Images · released 2026-08-25 · [advisory](https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:59641) - **RHSA-2026:59635** · Red Hat · fixed in: Red Hat Hardened Images · released 2026-08-25 · [advisory](https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:59635) - **Red Hat VEX** · Low · affected: Red Hat Developer Hub, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9, … · no fix planned: Red Hat Developer Hub, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, … · updated 2026-09-21 · [vex](https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-54874.json) - **RHSA-2026:67956** · Red Hat · fixed in: Red Hat Update Infrastructure 5 · released 2026-09-16 · [advisory](https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:67956)