CVE-2026-40691

HIGH

NLnet Labs Unbound - Packet of Death for DNSCrypt Over TCP

Title source: rule
STIX 2.1

Description

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

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