CVE-2026-42959

NameCVE-2026-42959
DescriptionNLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.0 has a denial of service vulnerability in the DNSSEC validator that can lead to a crash given malicious upstream replies. When Unbound constructs chase-reply messages for validation, the code uses the wrong counter to calculate write offsets for ADDITIONAL section rrsets. DNAME duplication could increase the ANSWER section count and authority filtering could decrease the AUTHORITY section count and create an uninitialized array slot. Combining these two, the validator later dereferences this uninitialized pointer, causing an immediate process crash. An adversary controlling a DNSSEC-signed domain can trigger this bug with a single query by configuring a DNAME chain with unsigned CNAMEs and a response containing unsigned AUTHORITY records alongside signed ADDITIONAL glue records. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix to use the proper counters to calculate the write offsets.
SourceCVE (at NVD; CERT, ENISA, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Debian ELTS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)
ReferencesDSA-6304-1
Debian Bugs1137187

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source PackageReleaseVersionStatus
unbound (PTS)bullseye1.13.1-1+deb11u2vulnerable
bullseye (security)1.13.1-1+deb11u7vulnerable
bookworm1.17.1-2+deb12u4vulnerable
bookworm (security)1.17.1-2+deb12u3vulnerable
trixie1.22.0-2+deb13u2vulnerable
trixie (security)1.22.0-2+deb13u3fixed
forky, sid1.25.1-1fixed

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
unboundsourcetrixie1.22.0-2+deb13u3DSA-6304-1
unboundsource(unstable)1.25.1-11137187

Notes

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/05/20/5
https://nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2026-42959.txt

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