CVE-2026-40691
HIGHNLnet Labs Unbound - Packet of Death for DNSCrypt Over TCP
Title source: ruleDescription
In Unbound 1.9.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when a DNSCrypt query is received over TCP, the routine that encrypts the reply in place fails to bound the reply length against the destination buffer size. The size clamp that protects the UDP path is not applied on the TCP path, so a reply larger than 65504 bytes is shifted forward by 48 bytes inside a buffer of capacity equal to 'msg-buffer-size', writing past the end of the heap allocation. A single malicious encrypted query crashes the resolver and lead to denial of service. This vulnerability needs Unbound to be compiled with DNSCrypt support ('--enable-dnscrypt') and the 'dnscrypt:' clause to be configured and enabled for the listening interfaces.
References (1)
Core 1
Core References
Vendor Advisory vendor-advisory
https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2026-40691.txt
Scores
CVSS v3
7.5
EPSS
0.0030
EPSS Percentile
22.8%
Attack Vector
NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CISA SSVC
Vulnrichment
Exploitation
none
Automatable
yes
Technical Impact
partial
Details
CWE
CWE-122
CWE-787
Status
published
Products (2)
NLnet Labs/Unbound
1.9.0 - 1.25.2
nlnetlabs/unbound
1.9.0 - 1.25.2
Published
Jul 22, 2026
Tracked Since
Jul 22, 2026