CVE-2026-78227
Received
Received - Intake
Use-After-Free in Unbound DNS-over-QUIC
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-78227, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-09-16
Last updated on: 2026-09-16
Assigner: NLnet Labs
Description
Description
NLnet Labs Unbound 1.22.0 up to and including 1.26.1, has a use-after-free vulnerability when compiled for DNS-over-QUIC support with '--with-libngtcp2'. Each DoQ stream owns an output buffer that holds the DNS response. ngtcp2's retransmission buffer keeps a shallow pointer into the output buffer for as long as a STREAM frame may be resent. On a client RESET_STREAM, the output buffer is freed but ngtcp2 still holds the matching retransmission entries. The next PTO timeout makes ngtcp2 re-encode the STREAM frame and copy from the freed buffer. A malicious actor that can query Unbound over DoQ and that withholds ACKs, sends RESET_STREAM, and waits for PTO, reaches this use-after-free with no privilege. This leads to retransmissions against freed memory and eventually an abnormal server exit under a 20-query spray.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| nlnet_labs | unbound | to 1.26.1 (inc) |
| nlnet_labs | unbound | From 1.22.0 (inc) to 1.26.0 (inc) |
| nlnet_labs | unbound | 1.26.1 |
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 Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory "belongs" to the code that operates on the new pointer. |
