CVE-2026-82717 PUBLISHED

CNAME synthesis could lead to heap corruption

Assigner: NLnet Labs
Reserved: 07.09.2026 Published: 16.09.2026 Updated: 16.09.2026

In NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including 1.26.0, a vulnerability was found in that can progressively corrupt heap memory and under certain systems and compilation options could lead to remote code execution. The vulnerability starts when CNAME synthesis during an upstream response needs to enforce(rewrite) a max TTL value in the packet buffer. Coupled with a compression pointer that points to the overwritten value and invalidates the domain name, it leads to an error path that does not properly move the buffer position and allows for the heap buffer overflow. Since this is heavily reliant on heap memory layout, results are memory corruption that eventually leads to a crash and under specific systems and compilation options remote code execution.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:U
CVSS Score: 8.4

Product Status

Vendor NLnet Labs
Product Unbound
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 0 to 1.26.1 (excl.)

Solutions

This issue is fixed starting with version 1.26.1

Credits

  • Ben Morris (Anthropic) finder

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-122: Heap-based Buffer Overflow CWE