Resource exhaustion in Nlnet Labs Unbound

CVE-2026-41292

NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.0 is vulnerable to a degradation of service attack related to parsing long lists of incoming EDNS options. An adversary sending queries with too many EDNS options can hold Unbound threads hostage while they are parsing and creating internal data structures for the options. Coordinated attacks can result in degradation and/or denial of service. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix to limit acceptable incoming EDNS options (100).

EPSS: 0.007 (51.5th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-41292?
CVE-2026-41292 is a high-severity vulnerability in Nlnet Labs Unbound, classified under Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-05-20.
How severe is CVE-2026-41292?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.