CVE-2026-42944
HIGHDescription
NLnet Labs Unbound 1.14.0 up to and including version 1.25.0 has a vulnerability that results in heap overflow when encoding multiple NSID and/or DNS Cookie EDNS and/or EDNS Padding options in the reply packet. The relevant options ('nsid', 'answer-cookie', 'pad-responses' (default)) need to be enabled for the vulnerability to be exploited. An adversary who can query Unbound can exploit the vulnerability by attaching multiple NSID and/or DNS Cookie EDNS and/or EDNS Padding options to the query. A flaw in the size calculation of the EDNS field truncates the correct value which allows the encoder to overflow the available space when writing. Those two combined lead to a heap overflow write of Unbound controlled data and eventually a crash. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix to de-duplicate the EDNS options and a fix to prevent truncation of the EDNS field size calculation.
CVSS v3 Vector
Exploitability
Impact
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Exploit Intelligence
Low risk: more likely to be exploited than 40% of all known CVEs.
References
- https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2026-42944.txt
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:19752
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:23231
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:24365
- https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:24369
- https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-42944
- https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2479774
- https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-42944.json
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Start freeThis product uses NVD data but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS scores courtesy of FIRST.org (https://www.first.org/epss). Source: CISA KEV Catalog. Data as of 2026-06-30.