CVE-2026-56416

MEDIUM

Possible heap buffer overflow when validator canonicalizes RDATA that contains domain name

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Description

In NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.1, when the validator builds the canonical RDATA form for an RRSIG-covered PX/RP/MINFO/SOA RRset, it computes the address of the second embedded domain name as 'datstart + dname_valid(datstart, ...)' and passes it straight to 'query_dname_tolower()' without checking that a second name is actually present in the RDATA. The wire-format parser accepts multi-dname RRs whose RDATA ends after the first name, so an attacker who runs a DNSSEC-signed authoritative server can deliver a record with an absent second domain name (e.g. SOA record) and cause 'query_dname_tolower()' to walk label-by-label through stale bytes in the per-worker 'env->scratch_buffer', past the end of that heap allocation if 'msg-buffer-size' has been lowered from the default. This leads to heap buffer overflow and on a release build the outcome relies heavily on the contents of the buffer tail and the adjacent heap chunk.

References (1)

Core 1
Core References

Scores

CVSS v3 4.8
EPSS 0.0012
EPSS Percentile 2.0%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE
CWE-354
Status published
Products (2)
NLnet Labs/Unbound < 1.25.2
nlnetlabs/unbound < 1.25.2
Published Jul 22, 2026
Tracked Since Jul 22, 2026