CVE-2026-50251

NameCVE-2026-50251
DescriptionIn 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.
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)

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
trixie (security), trixie1.22.0-2+deb13u3vulnerable
forky, sid1.26.0-1fixed

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

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
unboundsource(unstable)1.25.2-1

Notes

https://community.nlnetlabs.nl/t/unbound-1-25-2-released/3430

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