ALPINE-CVE-2026-54874
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
ALPINE-CVE-2026-54874
Primary source · Revision 1
Imported from structured advisory data. Source references identify upstream records or fields; verify affected versions and your deployed configuration.
Security context
Source reference: osv:ALPINE-CVE-2026-54874
openssl
Source reference: /affected/0/package/name
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- 3.5.8-r0
Source reference:
/affected/0/ranges - Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
openssl
Source reference: /affected/1/package/name
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- 3.5.8-r0
Source reference:
/affected/1/ranges - Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
openssl
Source reference: /affected/2/package/name
- Affected versions
- Not stated in this record
- Fixed versions
- 3.5.8-r0
Source reference:
/affected/2/ranges - Prerequisites
- Not stated in this record
Structured affected-version data
Original package identities and version rules from this source.
[
{
"ranges": [
{
"type": "ECOSYSTEM",
"events": [
{
"introduced": "1.0.2"
},
{
"fixed": "3.5.8-r0"
}
]
}
],
"package": {
"name": "openssl",
"purl": "pkg:apk/alpine/openssl?arch=source",
"ecosystem": "Alpine:v3.22"
},
"database_specific": {
"source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/alpine/ALPINE-CVE-2026-54874.json"
},
"ecosystem_specific": {}
},
{
"ranges": [
{
"type": "ECOSYSTEM",
"events": [
{
"introduced": "1.0.2"
},
{
"fixed": "3.5.8-r0"
}
]
}
],
"package": {
"name": "openssl",
"purl": "pkg:apk/alpine/openssl?arch=source",
"ecosystem": "Alpine:v3.23"
},
"database_specific": {
"source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/alpine/ALPINE-CVE-2026-54874.json"
},
"ecosystem_specific": {}
},
{
"ranges": [
{
"type": "ECOSYSTEM",
"events": [
{
"introduced": "1.0.2"
},
{
"fixed": "3.5.8-r0"
}
]
}
],
"package": {
"name": "openssl",
"purl": "pkg:apk/alpine/openssl?arch=source",
"ecosystem": "Alpine:v3.24"
},
"database_specific": {
"source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/alpine/ALPINE-CVE-2026-54874.json"
},
"ecosystem_specific": {}
}
]Publisher severity
No explicit severity was provided.
- Event
- #54530 · Revision 1
- Added to Heist Feed
- Publisher date