GHSA-6xvm-j4wr-6v98
Quinn affected by unauthenticated remote DoS via panic in QUIC transport parameter parsing
Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| crates.io | quinn-proto | < 0.11.14 | 0.11.14 |
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Summary
A remote, unauthenticated attacker can trigger a denial of service in applications using vulnerable `quinn` versions by sending a crafted QUIC Initial packet containing malformed `quic_transport_parameters`. `In quinn-proto` parsing logic, attacker-controlled varints are decoded with `unwrap()`, so truncated encodings cause `Err(UnexpectedEnd)` and `panic`. This is reachable over the network with a single packet and no prior trust or authentication.
### Details
The issue is panic-on-untrusted-input in QUIC transport parameter parsing.
In `quinn-proto` (observed in `quinn-proto 0.11.13`), parsing of some transport parameters uses a fallible varint decode followed by `unwrap()`. For malformed/truncated parameter values, decode returns `UnexpectedEnd`, and `unwrap()` panics.
#### Observed output:
```
thread 'tokio-rt-worker' (2366474) panicked at quinn-proto/src/transport_parameters.rs:473:67:
called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: UnexpectedEnd
```
### PoC
#### Reproduces against the upstream Quinn server example.
1. Start server:
```
cargo run --example server -- ./
```
2. Prepare PoC client environment:
```
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install aioquic
```
3. Run PoC script [attack.py](https://github.com/user-attachments/files/25741713/attack.py) against server QUIC listener (default example target shown):
```
python attack.py
```
#### Observed output
```
thread 'tokio-rt-worker' (2366903) panicked at quinn-proto/src/transport_parameters.rs:473:67:
called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: UnexpectedEnd
```
### Impact
Vulnerability type: Remote Denial of Service (panic/crash)
Attack requirements: Network reachability to UDP QUIC listener
Authentication/privileges: None
Who is impacted: Any server/application using affected `quinn/quinn-proto` versions where this parse path is reachable; process-level impact depends on integration panic handling policy
This vulnerability was originally submitted by @revofusion to the Ethereum Foundation bug bounty program
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.