Another 'ghost domain names' attack variant (NLnet Labs Unbound)

CVE-2026-40622
MEDIUM 6.6

At a glance

Source
NVD
EPSS
EPSS 0.14 % Β· percentile 4 ()
State
PUBLISHED
Published
Updated
Assigner
NLnet Labs
NVD status
Analyzed

Description

NLnet Labs Unbound 1.16.2 up to and including version 1.25.0 has a vulnerability of the 'ghost domain names' family of attacks that could extend the ghost domain window by up to one cached TTL configured value. Similar to other 'ghost domain names' attacks, an adversary needs to control a (ghost) zone and be able to query a vulnerable Unbound. A single client NS query can cause Unbound to overwrite the cached expired parent-side referral NS rrset with the child-side apex NS rrset and essentially extend the ghost domain window by up to one cached TTL configured value ('cache-max-ttl'). In configurations where 'harden-referral-path: yes' is used (non-default configuration), no client NS query is required since Unbound implicitly performs that query. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix that does not allow extension of TTLs for (parent) NS records regardless of their trust.

Weaknesses (CWE)

  • CWE-346 β€” Origin Validation Error

References

Scores

VersionScoreVectorScored by
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.6CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:AmberNLnet Labs
CVSS 4.0MEDIUM 6.6CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:AmberNVD Β· sep@nlnetlabs.nl (Secondary)
CVSS 3.1HIGH 7.5CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:NNVD Β· nvd@nist.gov (Primary)

European references

Affected configurations (NVD CPE)

Affected products

ProductVersions
NLnet Labs Β· Unboundaffected 1.16.2 < 1.25.1

Sources

SourceLicence
CVE List (CVEProject cvelistV5)CVE Program Terms of Use
EPSS (FIRST.org)FIRST β€” attribution requested
ENISA EUVDENISA β€” reproduction authorised, source acknowledged
NVD (NIST) via fkie-cad/nvd-json-data-feedsPublic domain β€” this product uses data from the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD