CVE-2026-42944

CVE Details

Release Date:	2026-05-20
Impact:	Important	What is this?

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.

See more information about CVE-2026-42944 from MITRE CVE dictionary and NIST NVD

NOTE: The following CVSS metrics and score provided are preliminary and subject to review.

CVSS v3 metrics

Base Score:	7.5
Vector String:	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Version:	3.1
Attack Vector:	Network
Attack Complexity:	Low
Privileges Required:	None
User Interaction:	None
Scope:	Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact:	None
Integrity Impact:	None
Availability Impact:	High

Errata information

Platform	Errata	Release Date
Oracle Linux version 8 (unbound)	ELSA-2026-24365	2026-06-08