In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.20.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when Unbound is configured with 'serve-expired: yes' and 'serve-expired-client-timeout > discard-timeout > 0' (contrary to the suggested values), the discard-timeout branch during the serve expired logic drops an aged client reply without performing the correct accounting for the number of reply addresses for the query. Other identical branches outside of serve expired perform the correct decrement. Since the counter is never decremented in such scenario, it can reach the maximum limit and new clients for duplicate in-flight queries are silently dropped resulting in degradation of resolution service. A malicious actor can exploit the vulnerability by querying the resolver for a client-controlled slow-on-demand authoritative zone that can drive the counter past the threshold. Shipped defaults for 'serve-expired-client-timeout: 1800' and 'discard-timeout: 1900' make the branch unreachable.
CVSS Details
- CVSS 3.1 Base Score: 5.9
- CVSS 3.1 Vector: (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H)
Covered by Rapid7
| Product | Vendor Advisory | Solution File | Added | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alpine Linux | — | Upgrade unbound | Jul 29, 2026 | Jul 22, 2026 |
| Debian | — | Upgrade unbound | Sep 21, 2026 | Jul 22, 2026 |
| Freebsd | — | Upgrade unbound | Jul 28, 2026 | Jul 25, 2026 |
| Redhat_linux | — | No solution exists | Jul 31, 2026 | Jul 22, 2026 |
| Vmware Photon_os | — | Use 'tdnf update' to upgrade all packages to the latest version. | Aug 10, 2026 | Jul 22, 2026 |
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