CVE-2026-96405

Aggregate DNS name chained pointer decompression work leads to degradation of service.

Medium 5.3

NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.26.1 limits compression-pointer traversal for each individual domain-name operation but has no aggregate inbound decompression-work budget. Many chained compression pointers in a message results in a lot of CPU usage following them. A malicious actor with recursive-query access and control of an ordinarily delegated authority that serves specially crafted replies can exploit the vulnerability and degrade Unbound's general performance.

Assigner
NLnet Labs
Published
2026-10-21
Updated
2026-10-21
Reserved
2026-10-14

Scores

SourceCVSSScoreSeverityVector
NLnet Labs3.15.3MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

Weaknesses

Affected

VendorProductVersions
NLnet Labs Unbound < 1.26.2 (affected)
others: unaffected

References

Full CVE JSON record (5.2)

API · GitHub · cve.org

{
  "containers": {
    "cna": {
      "affected": [
        {
          "defaultStatus": "unaffected",
          "product": "Unbound",
          "vendor": "NLnet Labs",
          "versions": [
            {
              "lessThan": "1.26.2",
              "status": "affected",
              "version": "0",
              "versionType": "semver"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "credits": [
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "type": "finder",
          "value": "Yuheng Zhang (Tsinghua University \u0026 Jingxian Technology Co., Ltd.)"
        },
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "type": "finder",
          "value": "Jianjun Chen (Tsinghua University)"
        },
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "type": "finder",
          "value": "Zihan Wang (Z.AI Co., Ltd.)"
        },
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "type": "finder",
          "value": "Kaiwen Shen (CloudItera)"
        }
      ],
      "datePublic": "2026-10-21T00:00:00.000Z",
      "descriptions": [
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "value": "NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.26.1 limits compression-pointer traversal for each individual domain-name operation but has no aggregate inbound decompression-work budget. Many chained compression pointers in a message results in a lot of CPU usage following them. A malicious actor with recursive-query access and control of an ordinarily delegated authority that serves specially crafted replies can exploit the vulnerability and degrade Unbound\u0027s general performance."
        }
      ],
      "metrics": [
        {
          "cvssV3_1": {
            "baseScore": 5.3,
            "baseSeverity": "MEDIUM",
            "vectorString": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L",
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              "value": "GENERAL"
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      "problemTypes": [
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          "descriptions": [
            {
              "cweId": "CWE-770",
              "description": "CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling",
              "lang": "en",
              "type": "CWE"
            }
          ]
        }
      ],
      "providerMetadata": {
        "dateUpdated": "2026-10-21T08:57:26.986Z",
        "orgId": "206fc3a0-e175-490b-9eaa-a5738056c9f6",
        "shortName": "NLnet Labs"
      },
      "references": [
        {
          "tags": [
            "vendor-advisory"
          ],
          "url": "https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2026-96405.txt"
        }
      ],
      "solutions": [
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "value": "This issue is fixed starting with version 1.26.2"
        }
      ],
      "timeline": [
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "time": "2026-07-16T00:00:00.000Z",
          "value": "Issue reported by Yuheng Zhang"
        },
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "time": "2026-07-17T00:00:00.000Z",
          "value": "NLnet Labs shares patch"
        },
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "time": "2026-07-17T00:00:00.000Z",
          "value": "Yuheng Zhang requests changes"
        },
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "time": "2026-07-21T00:00:00.000Z",
          "value": "NLnet Labs shares new patch"
        },
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "time": "2026-09-30T00:00:00.000Z",
          "value": "Yuheng Zhang verifies patch"
        },
        {
          "lang": "en",
          "time": "2026-09-16T00:00:00.000Z",
          "value": "Coordinated fixes released with version 1.26.2"
        }
      ],
      "title": "Aggregate DNS name chained pointer decompression work leads to degradation of service.",
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        "engine": "cvelib 1.8.0"
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    "assignerShortName": "NLnet Labs",
    "cveId": "CVE-2026-96405",
    "datePublished": "2026-10-21T08:57:26.986Z",
    "dateReserved": "2026-10-14T09:16:14.093Z",
    "dateUpdated": "2026-10-21T08:57:26.986Z",
    "state": "PUBLISHED"
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