CVE-2025-29785 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) CWE-248 vulnerability in github.com/quic-go/quic-go. A fix is available for github.com/quic-go/quic-go — see the affected versions and patch details below.
quic-go Has Panic in Path Probe Loss Recovery Handling
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2025-29785.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2025-29785 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,156 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
github.com/quic-go/quic-goReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Go packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
The loss recovery logic for path probe packets that was added in the v0.50.0 release can be used to trigger a nil-pointer dereference by a malicious QUIC client.
In order to do so, the attacker first sends valid QUIC packets from different remote addresses (thereby triggering the newly added path validation logic: the server sends path probe packets), and then sending ACKs for packets received from the server specifically crafted to trigger the nil-pointer dereference.
Patches
v0.50.1 contains a patch that fixes the vulnerability.
This release contains a test that generates random sequences of sent packets (both regular and path probe packets), that was used to verify that the patch actually covers all corner cases.
Workarounds
No.
References
This issue has been reported publicly, but without any context, in https://github.com/quic-go/quic-go/issues/4981.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐹Go | github.com/quic-go/quic-go | ≥ 0.50.0&&< 0.50.1 | 0.50.1go get github.com/quic-go/quic-go@v0.50.1 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for github.com/quic-go/quic-go, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update github.com/quic-go/quic-go to 0.50.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2025-29785 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2025-29785 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2025-29785. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2025-29785 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2025-29785 across Go dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.