---
id: RUSTSEC-2026-0342
aliases:
  - GHSA-2hv7-gw8g-gpq5
title: Zero-length DATAGRAM frames bypass the receive buffer limit in quinn-proto
summary: Zero-length DATAGRAM frames bypass the receive buffer limit in quinn-proto
severity: none
vendor: quinn-proto
product: quinn-proto
ecosystem: rust
affected:
  - 'quinn-proto >= 0.5.0, < 0.11.17'
patched:
  - quinn-proto 0.11.17
published: '2026-08-17'
updated: '2026-10-12'
sourceUpdated: '2026-10-12T18:15:01.956681478Z'
source: OSV
sourceUrl: 'https://osv.dev/vulnerability/RUSTSEC-2026-0342'
references:
  - url: 'https://crates.io/crates/quinn-proto'
  - url: 'https://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2026-0342.html'
  - url: 'https://github.com/quinn-rs/quinn/pull/2790'
tags:
  - osv
  - rust
ingestedAt: '2026-10-13T11:45:30.200Z'
---

## Overview

quinn-proto bounds its queue of received datagrams by charging each queued frame's payload length
against `TransportConfig::datagram_receive_buffer_size`, evicting the oldest datagrams when the
limit is exceeded. A DATAGRAM frame with an empty payload was charged zero bytes, so it never
triggered eviction and was appended to the queue, which has no other bound.

DATAGRAM frames are not subject to flow control. A peer that has completed the handshake can
therefore send a stream of empty DATAGRAM frames and grow the receiver's heap without limit until
the process is killed. An application that reads incoming datagrams but does so more slowly than
the peer sends them is still affected. Receiving datagrams is enabled by default, so all endpoints
that do not explicitly set `datagram_receive_buffer_size(None)` are affected.

The send path had the same accounting flaw: an application could enqueue an unbounded number of
empty outgoing datagrams without ever receiving `SendDatagramError::Blocked`.

The flaw was corrected in 0.11.17 by accounting for the fixed per-datagram overhead in both
directions, so that every queued datagram consumes buffer space.

Thanks to [@alexpyattaev](https://github.com/alexpyattaev) for reporting this issue.

## Affected packages

- `quinn-proto >= 0.5.0, < 0.11.17`

## Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

- `quinn-proto 0.11.17`