CVSS v3.1
5.9
EPSS
0.24%
Published
Jul 22, 2026
Modified
Jul 24, 2026
Public PoC / Exploit
All weaponized →No public PoC or exploit code indexed for this CVE.
Links to public security research (Exploit-DB, Nuclei, Trickest, GitHub) for defensive use only.
Description
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 Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HWeaknesses (CWE)
Affected Products (1)
References (1)