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CVE-2026-41637

Degradation of resolution service from improperly accounted client-terminated DNS-over-QUIC queries

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
Fix
Fixed in 1.25.2
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
  • Exploitation: none
  • Automatable: no
  • Technical impact: partial

Summary

In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.22.0 up to and including 1.25.1, client terminated DNS-over-QUIC (DoQ) queries are not accounted properly by Unbound resulting in low-cost inflation of the waiting number of replies for already in-flight resolution queries. This results in degradation of resolution service for new clients for already in-flight queries. A malicious actor can exploit the vulnerability by issuing DoQ queries for query names that need resolution and proceeding on immediately terminating the query by one of STOP_SENDING/RESET_STREAM/CONNECTION_CLOSE QUIC frames. Those terminated DoQ queries are not properly counted for and keep inflating the number of waiting replies for in-flight queries. When the maximum is reached, it results in silent query drops for new clients needing resolution for already in-flight queries. This vulnerability needs Unbound to be compiled with DoQ support ('--with-libngtcp2') and the 'quic-port' to be configured for the listening interfaces. Additionally, a malicious actor needs access to multiple source IPs to bypass the by-default configured 'wait-limit' option.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. CISA SSVC assessment

    Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial

  3. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • NLnet Labs Unbound

    From 1.22.0 · fixed in 1.25.2

References 1

nlnetlabs.nl