Medium severity · published Jul 22, 2026
CVE-2026-56416
Possible heap buffer overflow when validator canonicalizes RDATA that contains domain name
4.8
CVSS
0.1%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
In NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.1, when the validator builds the canonical RDATA form for an RRSIG-covered PX/RP/MINFO/SOA RRset, it computes the address of the second embedded domain name as 'datstart + dname_valid(datstart, ...)' and passes it straight to 'query_dname_tolower()' without checking that a second name is actually present in the RDATA. The wire-format parser accepts multi-dname RRs whose RDATA ends after the first name, so an attacker who runs a DNSSEC-signed authoritative server can deliver a record with an absent second domain name (e.g. SOA record) and cause 'query_dname_tolower()' to walk label-by-label through stale bytes in the per-worker 'env->scratch_buffer', past the end of that heap allocation if 'msg-buffer-size' has been lowered from the default. This leads to heap buffer overflow and on a release build the outcome relies heavily on the contents of the buffer tail and the adjacent heap chunk.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
Low
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.1% · higher than 2% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
UN
Unbound · NLnet Labs
before 1.25.2 · source: vendor, NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-56416
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-56416
Vendor Advisory
https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2026-56416.txt
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