CVE intelligence

CVE-2026-16318

Vulnerability intelligence

Published Jul 21, 2026Sources checked Sep 12, 2026

5.3MEDIUMCVSS out of 10

What this means

Review the available evidence

CVE-2026-16318 and is rated Medium severity with a CVSS score of 5.3. It is not in the current CISA KEV record we collected. That does not prove exploitation has not occurred.

CISA KEVNot listedBased on the latest collected catalog

EPSS0.4%Estimated 30-day exploitation probability

Ransomware useNot markedCISA KEV ransomware field

Threat actors0Source-linked actor relationships

Overview

What is CVE-2026-16318?

The QUIC transport parameters extension handler in s2n-tls incorrectly uses s2n_alloc instead of s2n_realloc to store the peer's transport parameters. When a TLS 1.3 connection goes through a HelloRetryRequest, the handler is called twice on the same connection. On the second call, s2n_alloc zeroes the existing pointer before allocating new memory, causing the first allocation to be leaked. This can occur during normal QUIC traffic when a client offers a key share group the server does not prefer. An unauthenticated user can amplify the issue by deliberately forcing HelloRetryRequests, causing up to approximately 64 KB of unreachable memory per handshake. Over time, this can lead to increased memory consumption on long-running server processes. The unreachable memory is only reclaimed when the process is restarted. Only server-side QUIC-enabled deployments are affected. Non-QUIC TLS connections are not affected. We recommend you upgrade s2n-tls to version v1.7.6