CVE-2026-42955

Published Jul 22, 2026

Last updated a month ago

Overview

Description
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.16.2 up to and including 1.25.1, a similar vulnerability as with CVE-2026-40622 in the 'ghost domain names' family of attacks was found in Unbound that could extend the ghost domain window by up to one cached TTL configured value for A/AAAA glue records. 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 A/AAAA query can cause Unbound to overwrite the cached expired parent-side glue 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 query is required since Unbound implicitly performs that query. This is a variant of CVE-2026-40622 which only addressed the NS query.
Source
sep@nlnetlabs.nl
NVD status
Analyzed
Products
unbound

Risk scores

CVSS 3.1

Type
Secondary
Base score
3.7
Impact score
1.4
Exploitability score
2.2
Vector string
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
Severity
LOW

Weaknesses

sep@nlnetlabs.nl
CWE-672

Social media

Hype score
Not currently trending

Configurations

References

Sources include official advisories and independent security research.