CVE-2026-55990

Packet of death for a DNSCrypt misconfigured Unbound

State
Published
Severity
5.9 Medium
Published
Jul 22, 2026
Updated
Jul 22, 2026
Reserved
Jun 22, 2026

Read the record on cve.org

Description

In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.7.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when the 'dnscrypt:' clause lists more 'dnscrypt-provider-cert:' files than there are matching 'dnscrypt-secret-key:' files, Unbound fills only the matched prefix and leaves the tail slots at the '0xdb' fill that libsodium's allocator writes into every allocation. Unbound would then iterate over the number of cert files, not the actual slots, so it walks into a slot with garbage data filled with '0xdb' bytes. Any unauthenticated client that sends one UDP datagram of ≥ 68 bytes whose first 8 bytes are '0xdb' to 'dnscrypt-port' will use that garbage entry which leads to a garbage dereference killing the server. This is a silent faulty configuration that goes unnoticed until triggered with the right client query. Unbound needs to be compiled with DNSCrypt support ('--enable-dnscrypt').

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.15.9 MediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HNLnet Labs

Weaknesses

  • CWE-457 Use of Uninitialized Variable

Affected Products

ProductVersions
UnboundNLnet Labs
  • 1.7.0 to before 1.25.2Affected

References

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