NLnet Labs Unbound up to 1.25.1 Iterator find_closest_of_type input validation

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability categorized as very critical has been discovered in NLnet Labs Unbound up to 1.25.1. Affected is the function find_closest_of_type of the component Iterator. Executing a manipulation can lead to input validation. This vulnerability appears as CVE-2026-55973. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as very critical was found in NLnet Labs Unbound up to 1.25.1. This vulnerability affects the function find_closest_of_type of the component Iterator. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a input validation vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-20. The product receives input or data, but it does not validate or incorrectly validates that the input has the properties that are required to process the data safely and correctly. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

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.

The advisory is shared for download at nlnetlabs.nl. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-55973 since 06/22/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be initiated remotely. No form of authentication is required for a successful exploitation. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 07/22/2026).

Upgrading to version 1.25.2 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• NLnet Labs

Name

• Unbound

Version

• 1.25.0
• 1.25.1

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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