Vulnerability in Nlnet Labs Unbound

CVE-2026-44690

In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.7.0 up to and including 1.25.1, insufficient validation of the RRSIG.Labels field combined with premature cache writes during RFC 8198 aggressive NSEC processing leads to cache poisoning that permits a malicious actor controlling a single delegated zone to poison arbitrary sibling zones under NSEC-signed parent domains. A malicious actor with one registered domain under an NSEC-signed TLD can serve malicious insecure DNS responses for unrelated sibling domains (sharing the same parent zone). Arbitrary delegations that do not exist under the parent domain and are covered by the parent's NSEC chain can be brought into insecure existence by fraudulent wildcard DS records (less labels than expected, unknown algorithm) from the malicious sibling domain. This allows the malicious actor to inject insecure wildcard records for those delegations.

EPSS: 0.001 (4.1th 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:H/A:N.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-44690?
CVE-2026-44690 is a high-severity vulnerability in Nlnet Labs Unbound, classified under Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2026-07-22.
How severe is CVE-2026-44690?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.