Medium severity · published Oct 21, 2026
CVE-2026-96405
Aggregate DNS name chained pointer decompression work leads to degradation of service.
5.3
CVSS
0.3%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.26.1 limits compression-pointer traversal for each individual domain-name operation but has no aggregate inbound decompression-work budget. Many chained compression pointers in a message results in a lot of CPU usage following them. A malicious actor with recursive-query access and control of an ordinarily delegated authority that serves specially crafted replies can exploit the vulnerability and degrade Unbound's general performance.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.3% · higher than 17% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
UN
Unbound · NLnet Labs
before 1.26.2 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-96405
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-96405
www.nlnetlabs.nl
https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2026-96405.txt
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