Medium severity · published Sep 17, 2026
CVE-2026-8674
Assertion failure in the DNS stub resolver with a long search domain
5.3
CVSS
0.3%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Initializing the DNS stub resolver from an /etc/resolv.conf file, or a LOCALDOMAIN environment variable, whose search list contains a domain of roughly 200 characters or more in the GNU C Library version 2.26 to 2.44 results in an assertion failure which aborts the process.
The resolver truncates the search list when copying it into the fixed-size _res.defdname buffer, then asserts that the copy is consistent with the full configuration. The consistency check compared against the wrong size and did not handle a first entry that does not fit, so a correctly truncated list failed the assertion. Any process that resolves names through the library is affected, including long-running processes that reload /etc/resolv.conf on the next query after it changes. Search domains are commonly written to /etc/resolv.conf from data received over DHCP or from a VPN server, so an attacker on the local network may be able to trigger this without privileges on the target system, subject to validation by the network configuration software.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:A/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Adjacent
Complexity
High
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.3% · higher than 24% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
GL
glibc · The GNU C Library
2.26 through 2.44 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-8674
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-8674
joshua.hu
https://joshua.hu/fuzzing-glibc-libresolv
sourceware.org
https://sourceware.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=31026
sourceware.org
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob_plain;f=advisories/GLIBC-SA-2026-0021
sourceware.org
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=commit;h=506ea57086bfb9ce3daff1c14246a1cb532aba0a
www.openwall.com
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/09/17/4
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