CVE-2026-56444

5.9 MEDIUM
Published: July 22, 2026 Modified: July 22, 2026
View on NVD

Description

In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.20.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when Unbound is configured with 'serve-expired: yes' and 'serve-expired-client-timeout > discard-timeout > 0' (contrary to the suggested values), the discard-timeout branch during the serve expired logic drops an aged client reply without performing the correct accounting for the number of reply addresses for the query. Other identical branches outside of serve expired perform the correct decrement. Since the counter is never decremented in such scenario, it can reach the maximum limit and new clients for duplicate in-flight queries are silently dropped resulting in degradation of resolution service. A malicious actor can exploit the vulnerability by querying the resolver for a client-controlled slow-on-demand authoritative zone that can drive the counter past the threshold. Shipped defaults for 'serve-expired-client-timeout: 1800' and 'discard-timeout: 1900' make the branch unreachable.

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CVSS v3.x Details

0.0 Low Medium High Critical 10.0
Vector String
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

Patch Vendor Advisory Exploit Third Party Advisory

1 reference(s) from NVD

Quick Stats

CVSS v3 Score
5.9 / 10.0
Exploitation Status
Not in CISA KEV

Weaknesses (CWE)