NLnet Labs Unbound up to 1.26.0 serve-expired resource consumption

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in NLnet Labs Unbound up to 1.26.0. It has been rated as critical. This vulnerability affects unknown code of the component serve-expired. Performing a manipulation results in resource consumption. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-77860. The attack may be initiated remotely. There is no available exploit. Upgrading the affected component is advised.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in NLnet Labs Unbound up to 1.26.0. It has been classified as critical. This affects an unknown function of the component serve-expired. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a resource consumption vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-400. The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources. This is going to have an impact on availability. The summary by CVE is:

In NLnetLabs Unbound 1.20.0 up to and including 1.26.0, a vulnerability on the 'serve-expired' code path can cause a double decrement on the 'wait-limit' counter per client IP essentially bypassing one of the counter measures that was introduced for DNSBomb (CVE-2024-33655). A malicious actor can exploit this by controlling an authoritative zone with short TTL, so cached entries expire quickly. Each 'slow' query, one the attacker's authoritative never answers, is followed by one query for an expired cached name, which is answered immediately via the 'serve-expired' path and decrements the counter twice. This second query was named 'pump'. By alternating slow queries and pumps, the attacker keeps the per-client counter at or below the configured 'wait-limit' indefinitely, and can hold an arbitrary number of pending queries from a single source IP, up to the global mesh quota (num-queries-per-thread); eventually bypassing one of the counter measures introduced for DNSBomb (CVE-2024-33655). This vulnerability is present on the 'serve-expired' code path.

The advisory is shared at nlnetlabs.nl. This vulnerability is uniquely identified as CVE-2026-77860 since 09/07/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to initiate the attack remotely. No form of authentication is needed for exploitation. Neither technical details nor an exploit are publicly available. MITRE ATT&CK project uses the attack technique T1499 for this issue.

Upgrading to version 1.26.1 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• NLnet Labs

Name

• Unbound

Version

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 1.2
• 1.3
• 1.4
• 1.5
• 1.6
• 1.7
• 1.8
• 1.9
• 1.10
• 1.11
• 1.12
• 1.13
• 1.14
• 1.15
• 1.16
• 1.17
• 1.18
• 1.19
• 1.20
• 1.21
• 1.22
• 1.23
• 1.24
• 1.25
• 1.26.0

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

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Entryinfo

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