High severity · published May 13, 2026
CVE-2026-42304
Twisted: Denial of Service (DoS) in twisted.names via Crafted DNS Compression Pointer Chains
7.5
CVSS
0.4%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Twisted is an event-based framework for internet applications, supporting Python 3.6+. Prior to 26.4.0rc2, the twisted.names module is vulnerable to a Denial of Service (DoS) attack via resource exhaustion during DNS name decompression. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this by sending a crafted TCP DNS packet containing deeply chained compression pointers. This flaw bypasses previous loop-prevention logic, causing the single-threaded Twisted reactor to hang while processing millions of recursive lookups, effectively freezing the server. This vulnerability is fixed in 26.4.0rc2.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.4% · higher than 37% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
TW
twisted · twisted
< 26.4.0rc2 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-42304
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-42304
Exploit
https://github.com/twisted/twisted/security/advisories/GHSA-grgv-6hw6-v9g4
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