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
- Nlnet Labs Unbound — versions 1.7.0
- Nlnetlabs Unbound
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- sep@nlnetlabs.nl (vendor-advisory, Vendor Advisory)
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.