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CVE-2026-56444 Detail

Description

In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.20.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when Unbound is configured with 'serve-expired: yes' and 'serve-expired-client-timeout > discard-timeout > 0' (contrary to the suggested values), the discard-timeout branch during the serve expired logic drops an aged client reply without performing the correct accounting for the number of reply addresses for the query. Other identical branches outside of serve expired perform the correct decrement. Since the counter is never decremented in such scenario, it can reach the maximum limit and new clients for duplicate in-flight queries are silently dropped resulting in degradation of resolution service. A malicious actor can exploit the vulnerability by querying the resolver for a client-controlled slow-on-demand authoritative zone that can drive the counter past the threshold. Shipped defaults for 'serve-expired-client-timeout: 1800' and 'discard-timeout: 1900' make the branch unreachable.


Metrics

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CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

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URL Source(s) Tag(s)
NLnet Labs

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-772 Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime NLnet Labs  

Change History

2 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2026-56444
NVD Published Date:
07/22/2026
NVD Last Modified:
07/22/2026
Source:
NLnet Labs