CVE-2026-42923

medium

Published 2026-05-20 · Modified 2026-05-20

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CVSS v3

5.3

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L

CVSS v4 NEW

6.9

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:L/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:Amber

VIR risk

5.3

Description

NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.0 has a vulnerability in the DNSSEC validator where the code path to consult the negative cache for DS records does not take into account the limit on NSEC3 hash calculations introduced in 1.19.1. This leads to degradation of service during the attack. An adversary that controls a DNSSEC signed zone can exploit this by signing NSEC3 records with acceptably high iterations for child delegations and querying a vulnerable Unbound. Unbound will keep performing the allowed hash calculations on the NSEC3 records and will not limit the work by the mitigation introduced in 1.19.1. As a side effect, a global lock for the negative cache will be held for the duration of the hashing, blocking other threads that need to consult the negative cache. Coordinated attacks could raise the vulnerability to denial of service. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix to bound the vulnerable code path with the existing limit for NSEC3 hash calculations.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

63%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

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OS impact

OS	Version	Status	Fixed in
sles		affected
debian	bookworm	affected
debian	bullseye	affected
debian	forky	fixed	`1.25.1-1`
debian	sid	fixed	`1.25.1-1`
debian	trixie	fixed	`1.22.0-2+deb13u3`
windows		affected

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
nlnetlabs	unbound	`{"startIncluding":"1.19.1","endExcluding":"1.25.1"}`	`1.25.1`

References

CWEs

CWE-407

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.