CVE-2026-55973 (GCVE-0-2026-55973)
Vulnerability from cvelistv5 – Published: 2026-07-22 13:09 – Updated: 2026-07-22 14:06
VLAI
EPSS
VEX
Title
'dns-error-reporting: yes' leads to stack buffer overflow
Summary
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.23.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when 'dns-error-reporting: yes' is set, the EDNS Report-Channel option (code 18) from the last upstream response is read and uses the option's length as the length of the agent domain. When a domain name check is performed on the agent domain, the returned lenght is not used and if the agent domain is followed by garbage, those bytes are moved onto the tail of the synthetic '_er.' report query name. That query name is later used in the iterator via a subquery to send out the DNS Error Report and when Unbound tries to walk that query name during 'find_closest_of_type()', it strips labels using the query name length rather than stopping at the embedded root, walks one byte past it, and feeds the first garbage byte to 'dname_query_hash()' as a label length writing over the stack variable 'labuf'. One ordinary upstream response from a delegated zone the attacker controls is sufficient to terminate the daemon.
Severity
7.5 (High)
SSVC
Exploitation: none
Automatable: yes
Technical Impact: partial
CISA Coordinator (v2.0.3)
CWE
- CWE-20 - Improper Input Validation
Assigner
References
1 reference
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-20… | vendor-advisory |
Impacted products
1 product
| Vendor | Product | Version | |
|---|---|---|---|
| NLnet Labs | Unbound |
Affected:
1.23.0 , < 1.25.2
(semver)
|
Date Public
2026-07-22 00:00
Credits
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Experimental. This forecast is provided for visualization only and may change without notice. Do not use it for operational decisions.
Forecast uses a logistic model when the trend is rising, or an exponential decay model when the trend is falling. Fitted via linearized least squares.
Sightings
| Author | Source | Type | Date | Other |
|---|
Nomenclature
- Seen: The vulnerability was mentioned, discussed, or observed by the user.
- Confirmed: The vulnerability has been validated from an analyst's perspective.
- Published Proof of Concept: A public proof of concept is available for this vulnerability.
- Exploited: The vulnerability was observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Patched: The vulnerability was observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not exploited: The vulnerability was not observed as exploited by the user who reported the sighting.
- Not confirmed: The user expressed doubt about the validity of the vulnerability.
- Not patched: The vulnerability was not observed as successfully patched by the user who reported the sighting.
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The MITRE ATT&CK techniques below are AI-generated suggestions, inferred from the description of the
vulnerability by the CIRCL/vulnerability-attack-technique-classification-roberta-base
model, served locally by ML-Gateway.
They have not been verified by an analyst and are provided for guidance only.
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