REDHAT-BUG-2479774: High severity Nlnet Labs Unbound vulnerability

Published May 19, 2026
·
Updated

A vulnerability was found in Unbound that results in heap overflow when encoding multiple NSID and/or DNS Cookie EDNS and/or EDNS Padding options in the reply packet. The relevant options ('nsid', 'answer-cookie', 'pad-responses' (default)) need to be enabled for the vulnerability to be exploited.

Unbound 1.25.1 includes a fix to de-duplicate the EDNS options and a fix to prevent truncation of the EDNS field size calculation that also contributes to the heap overflow.

Affected Software

1 affected component
Nlnet Labs Unbound<1.25.1

Remediation

Recommended actions to resolve this vulnerability, in priority order.

  1. Upgrade

    Upgrade Unbound to a version that resolves this vulnerability.

    Fixed in 1.25.1
  2. Configuration

    Disable the 'nsid' option to prevent exploitation (vulnerability requires 'nsid' among the relevant options).

    Unbound nsid = disable
  3. Configuration

    Disable the 'answer-cookie' option to prevent exploitation (vulnerability requires 'answer-cookie' among the relevant options).

    Unbound answer-cookie = disable
  4. Configuration

    Disable 'pad-responses' (noting it is a default option) to prevent exploitation (vulnerability requires 'pad-responses' among the relevant options).

    Unbound pad-responses = disable

Event History

May 19, 2026
Data Sourced
via Red Hat·10:09 AM
DescriptionSeverityAffected Software

Frequently Asked Questions

1

Which configurations are exposed to this issue?

Exploitation requires relevant EDNS reply options to be enabled: nsid, answer-cookie, and/or pad-responses. The pad-responses option is enabled by default, so default configurations may be affected.

2

What does an attacker need to trigger the vulnerability?

An attacker needs to cause Unbound to encode multiple NSID, DNS Cookie EDNS, and/or EDNS Padding options in a reply packet. The issue occurs during reply-packet encoding when the relevant options are enabled.

3

What remediation is identified?

Unbound 1.25.1 includes fixes that de-duplicate EDNS options and prevent truncation in EDNS field-size calculation, addressing contributing conditions for the heap overflow.

Contact

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