QUICsand: Exploiting State-Table Saturation and Connection ID Ambiguity for Session Hijacking in QUIC-Enabled Architectures

Author(s)	Dr. Rohitkumar Gautam, Dr. Shifa Cyclewala
Country	India
Abstract	The QUIC transport protocol introduces a paradigm shift in session persistence through the use of Connection Identifiers (CIDs), decoupling connections from the traditional network 4-tuple. While this enables seamless connection migration, it introduces a critical dependency on the state-tracking capabilities of intermediate middleboxes and Load Balancers (LBs). This paper introduces QUICsand, a novel attack vector that leverages CID-induced state exhaustion. By "drowning" the LB's mapping table with high-entropy, orphaned CIDs, an attacker can force the infrastructure into an "Ambiguity State." In this state, the LB reverts to deterministic hashing, allowing an attacker to predict and collide with legitimate user traffic. We present a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) demonstrating a session takeover success rate of $12.2% in simulated high-traffic environments.
Keywords	quic, quicsand, quicprotocol
Field	Computer > Data / Information
Published In	Volume 7, Issue 6, November-December 2025
Published On	2025-12-21
DOI	https://doi.org/10.36948/ijfmr.2025.v07i06.64159

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