GHSA-g754-hx8w-x2g6 — quic-go HTTP/3 QPACK Header Expansion DoS

Affected: Go: github.com/quic-go/quic-go

## Summary

An attacker can cause excessive memory allocation in quic-go's HTTP/3 client and server implementations by sending a QPACK-encoded HEADERS frame that decodes into a large header field section (many unique header names and/or large values). The implementation builds an `http.Header` (used on the `http.Request` and `http.Response`, respectively), while only enforcing limits on the size of the (QPACK-compressed) HEADERS frame, but not on the decoded header, leading to memory exhaustion.

## Impact

A misbehaving or malicious peer can cause a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on quic-go's HTTP/3 servers or clients by triggering excessive memory allocation, potentially leading to crashes or exhaustion. It affects both servers and clients due to symmetric header construction.

## Details

In HTTP/3, headers are compressed using QPACK (RFC 9204). quic-go's HTTP/3 server (and client) decodes the QPACK-encoded HEADERS frame into header fields, then constructs an http.Request (or response).

`http3.Server.MaxHeaderBytes` and `http3.Transport.MaxResponseHeaderBytes`, respectively, limit encoded HEADERS frame size (default: 1 MB server, 10 MB client), but not decoded size. A maliciously crafted HEADERS frame can expand to ~50x the encoded size using QPACK static table entries with long names / values.

RFC 9114 requires enforcing decoded field section size limits via SETTINGS, which quic-go did not do.

## The Fix

quic-go now enforces RFC 9114 decoded field section size limits…

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GHSA-g754-hx8w-x2g6 — quic-go HTTP/3 QPACK Header Expansion DoS