Nlnetlabs: >> Unbound >> 1.7.1 Security Vulnerabilities
In NLnetLabs Unbound up to and including 1.26.0, a degradation of service vulnerability is present in the TCP/DoT reading procedure where there is no limit on consecutive reads. A malicious actor that can stream and sustain a rate of distinct uncached names over the TCP/DoT connection, monopolizes a single worker's entire event loop for as long as its writes stay ahead of the drain.
CVSS Score
5.3
EPSS Score
0.003
Published
2026-09-16
In NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including 1.26.0, a 255 length query name with a large TCP response can lead to a heap buffer overflow during the RRSet canonicalisation routine. This is caused by missing to add the first owner name into the buffer length check. A malicious actor operating a malicious name server or tampering with an incoming response to Unbound (canonicalisation happens before DNSSEC validation), can trigger the vulnerability.
CVSS Score
7.5
EPSS Score
0.004
Published
2026-09-16
In NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including 1.26.0, a vulnerability was found in that can progressively corrupt heap memory and under certain systems and compilation options could lead to remote code execution. The vulnerability starts when CNAME synthesis during an upstream response needs to enforce(rewrite) a max TTL value in the packet buffer. Coupled with a compression pointer that points to the overwritten value and invalidates the domain name, it leads to an error path that does not properly move the buffer position and allows for the heap buffer overflow. Since this is heavily reliant on heap memory layout, results are memory corruption that eventually leads to a crash and under specific systems and compilation options remote code execution.
CVSS Score
8.4
EPSS Score
0.004
Published
2026-09-16
Novel vulnerabilities to launch algorithmic complexity attacks on DNSSEC have been researched under the term 'ReTrap'. These result in degradation of service when malicious zones are used to serve the algorithmic complexity vulnerabilities. NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including 1.26.0 is vulnerable to some of them. TagTrap, where the triple(Zone, Algo, KeyTag) matching mechanism introduces a significant attack vector when resolvers handle malicious responses containing numerous mismatched DNSKEY, RRSIG, and DS record. DelegationTrap, where constructing the chain-of-trust requires iterative validation of DNSKEY and DS records from the root zone downward. For deeply nested domains, this results in significant computational overhead. NsecTrap, where responses with excessive invalid NSEC records compel the resolver to validate each one. AdditionalTrap, where Unbound by default would try to DNSSEC validate the ADDITIONAL section as well. This can be exploited to waste validation resources by malicious users.
CVSS Score
5.3
EPSS Score
0.003
Published
2026-09-16
In NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.1, when the validator builds the canonical RDATA form for an RRSIG-covered PX/RP/MINFO/SOA RRset, it computes the address of the second embedded domain name as 'datstart + dname_valid(datstart, ...)' and passes it straight to 'query_dname_tolower()' without checking that a second name is actually present in the RDATA. The wire-format parser accepts multi-dname RRs whose RDATA ends after the first name, so an attacker who runs a DNSSEC-signed authoritative server can deliver a record with an absent second domain name (e.g. SOA record) and cause 'query_dname_tolower()' to walk label-by-label through stale bytes in the per-worker 'env->scratch_buffer', past the end of that heap allocation if 'msg-buffer-size' has been lowered from the default. This leads to heap buffer overflow and on a release build the outcome relies heavily on the contents of the buffer tail and the adjacent heap chunk.
CVSS Score
4.8
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-07-22
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.6.0 up to and including 1.25.1, the 'view_local_data' and 'view_local_datas' commands of 'unbound-control' create a bare local zones tree for an already configured named view when the view is configured with no local data to begin with. However, the creation through the control interface omits adding the default-protected zones (e.g., RFC 1918 reverse, AS112 zones, .onion, .localhost). Once the local zone tree exists without the defaults, every query for a default-protected name from a client mapped to that view escapes to the public DNS via the iterator instead of being answered locally, bypassing local policy expectations.
CVSS Score
3.1
EPSS Score
0.002
Published
2026-07-22
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.7.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when the 'dnscrypt:' clause lists more 'dnscrypt-provider-cert:' files than there are matching 'dnscrypt-secret-key:' files, Unbound fills only the matched prefix and leaves the tail slots at the '0xdb' fill that libsodium's allocator writes into every allocation. Unbound would then iterate over the number of cert files, not the actual slots, so it walks into a slot with garbage data filled with '0xdb' bytes. Any unauthenticated client that sends one UDP datagram of ≥ 68 bytes whose first 8 bytes are '0xdb' to 'dnscrypt-port' will use that garbage entry which leads to a garbage dereference killing the server. This is a silent faulty configuration that goes unnoticed until triggered with the right client query. Unbound needs to be compiled with DNSCrypt support ('--enable-dnscrypt').
CVSS Score
5.9
EPSS Score
0.003
Published
2026-07-22
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.6.2 up to and including 1.25.1, when Unbound is configured with the 'respip' module in front of the validator together with a 'response-ip' redirect rule or an RPZ file with an RPZ-IP trigger, the rewriting handler does not check the security status of the upstream answer and can instead rewrite a BOGUS A/AAAA answer to point to an operator's configured IP. If the validator finds an expired or otherwise invalid RRSIG on an answer whose A record falls within a 'response-ip'/RPZ configuration, the answer is still rewritten and given a hard coded security level of INSECURE. This results in the client receiving an INSECURE NOERROR reply rewritten by the operator's configured IP. A malicious actor can exploit the possible poisonous effect by spoofing a BOGUS A/AAAA answer that falls inside the operator's configured subnet rewrites. Such DNSSEC protected answers are then insecurely redirected to the operator's configured target.
CVSS Score
6.3
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-07-22
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.7.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when an auth/rpz zone has a configured primary hostname that resolves to BOGUS A/AAAA, it is still considered as a possible XFR endpoint. A malicious actor that can spoof the hostname's A/AAAA record (no valid RRSIG required) becomes the zone's XFR primary and can replaces the entire zone/the resolver's entire response policy.
CVSS Score
6.5
EPSS Score
0.001
Published
2026-07-22
In NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.1, when 'unwanted-reply-threshold' is enabled (set to any value greater than zero), glue records of 0.0.0.0/::0 can short-circuit Unbound, on systems that can direct such traffic, by issuing DNS queries and receiving seemingly unwanted replies since the remote IP does not match the original source IP of 0.0.0.0/::0. This behavior keeps on looping for the glue records and pushing the counter to the configured 'unwanted-reply-threshold' that triggers a defensive cache clear. A malicious actor who controls a delegation that returns in-bailiwick glue of 0.0.0.0/::0 can drive the counter to the limit of 'unwanted-reply-threshold' to the threshold and trigger a cache clean of the message and rrset caches; at will, indefinitely, without sending a single spoofed packet. The iterator uses the 0.0.0.0/::0 glue, and a system that can route this (e.g., Linux kernel routes the datagram over loopback), Unbound's own listener answers from 127.0.0.1. Because of the mismatch of 0.0.0.0 and 127.0.0.1, in this example, Unbound accounts the reply as an unwanted (probably spoofed) answer. The counter resets to zero on every cache flush, so the attack loops forever.
CVSS Score
5.3
EPSS Score
0.003
Published
2026-07-22
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