CVE-2026-42944

High

Description

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.

SeverityHigh
CVSS7.5
Exploit probability—
ProductNlnetlabs Unbound
PublishedMay 20, 2026
First seenMay 20, 2026

How to fix

Affected products

ProductAffected versionsFixed in
nlnetlabs unbound1.14.0 ≤ v < 1.25.11.25.1

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