CVE-2026-11721 PUBLISHED

Cache poisoning possible with label count discrepancy, RRSIG, and wildcards

Assigner: isc
Reserved: 09.06.2026 Published: 22.07.2026 Updated: 22.07.2026

It is possible for an attacker's zone to respond to a query with an RRSIG that has a smaller number of labels than the zone in which the RRSIG is contained. This causes named to produce a wildcard name for a zone that is shorter than the attacker's zone, which can result in cache poisoning. For this attack to have any effect, the resolver under attack must have set synth-from-dnssec yes; (which is the default). This issue affects BIND 9 versions 9.11.0 through 9.18.50, 9.20.0 through 9.20.24, 9.21.0 through 9.21.23, 9.11.3-S1 through 9.18.50-S1, and 9.20.9-S1 through 9.20.24-S1.

Metrics

CVSS 3.1

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
CVSS Score: 7.5

Attack Vector	Network	Scope	Unchanged
Attack Complexity	Low	Confidentiality Impact	None
Privileges Required	None	Integrity Impact	High
User Interaction	None	Availability Impact	None

CVSS 3.1

Product Status

Vendor	ISC
Product	BIND 9
Versions	Default: unaffected affected from 9.11.0 to 9.18.50 (incl.) affected from 9.20.0 to 9.20.24 (incl.) affected from 9.21.0 to 9.21.23 (incl.) affected from 9.11.3-S1 to 9.18.50-S1 (incl.) affected from 9.20.9-S1 to 9.20.24-S1 (incl.)

Exploits

We are not aware of any active exploits.

Workarounds

No workarounds known.

Solutions

Upgrade to the patched release most closely related to your current version of BIND 9: 9.20.26, 9.21.24, or 9.20.26-S1.

Credits

ISC would like to thank Qifan Zhang of Palo Alto Networks for bringing this vulnerability to our attention.