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CVE-2026-55990

MEDIUM severity · CVSS 5.9 · CWE-457
5.9CVSS MEDIUM

Summary

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').

Impact & exploitability

Attack vectorNetwork
Attack complexityHigh
Privileges requiredNone
User interactionNone
Confidentiality impactNone
Integrity impactNone
Availability impactHigh
Exploit probability (EPSS)0%

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected products we track (1)

Recommendation

Apply the vendor fix in your normal patch cycle. Open any affected product above for its exact safe version.