Low severity · published Jul 22, 2026
CVE-2026-46582
A wildcard replay, as another piece of data, triggers poisoning in the serve expired reply path
3.7
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.6.0 up to and including 1.25.1, a replay of a wildcard rrset as another piece of data, could be briefly considered DNSSEC secure based only on the RRSIG validation and stored into cache, before later validation treats it as bogus based on NSEC validation. When the resolving thread puts secure on the rrset, and another thread that is on the serve expired path then picks up the updated rrset contents with the secure status for a reply, it can be used to change a specific record, next to a wildcard that could be covered by the wildcard, into the wildcard. A malicious actor can exploit the possible poisonous effect by having any DNSSEC-singed domain (irrelevant to the victim domain) and a CNAME wrapper record that points to a record next to a wildcard (that could be covered by the wildcard). Then quering Unbound for the wildcard sibling record would seed the secure message. A later (after expiry) query for the CNAME wrapper would need to resolve the target sibling record. If the wildcard replay is injected into the response, the wildcard rrset will update the expired sibling record with a secure status before completing proper wildcard validation with NSEC records and eventually treating the CNAME wrapper answer as bogus. The updated poisoned rrset is now secure and points to the wildcard. This vulnerability is explicit for the serve expired path and needs injection of the signed wildcard rrset without the NSEC accompanying rrset.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
Low
Availability
None
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 8% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
UN
Unbound · NLnet Labs
1.6.0 before 1.25.2 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-46582
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-46582
Vendor Advisory
https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2026-46582.txt
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