CVE-2026-50046
Received
Received - Intake
Use-After-Free in NLnet Labs Unbound DNS Server
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-50046, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-07-22
Last updated on: 2026-07-22
Assigner: NLnet Labs
Description
Description
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.15.0 up to and including 1.25.1, the TLS server name used for DNS-over-TLS (DoT) forwarded queries is tied to a struct's ('serviced_query') lifetime but also referenced by another struct ('waiting_tcp'). When the owning struct is jostled out of the mesh while the DoT TCP stream is still handshaking it frees the storage behind the referenced string and if the TLS stream then errors out, it dereferences the freed pointer. The dereference is read-only and the practical impact is a daemon crash resulting in denial of service. A malicious actor that knows a DoT forwarding/stub Unbound's configuration could exploit the vulnerability by quering records in the appropriate zone while keeping Unbound uder pressure so that the jostle logic kicks in. If answers for the vulnerable zone are slow, the likelihood of jostling such queries is higher, although the timing of the jostle needs to be precise. Requirements for a vulnerable Unbound is the existence of a stub/forward zone configured for DoT together with a configured '#authname' suffix on the server identification. The connectivity to the server needs to exhibit a transient failure at the correct time in order to kick off the vulnerable error path.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| nlnet_labs | unbound | to 1.25.1 (inc) |
| nlnetlabs | unbound | From 1.15.0 (inc) to 1.25.1 (inc) |
| nlnetlabs | unbound | 1.25.2 |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-416 | The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer. |
