# CVE-2026-41292: Long list of incoming EDNS options degrades performance


- **Severity:** Medium 6.6 (`CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/U:Red`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 20 May 2026
- **Updated:** 1 Sep 2026
- **Also known as:** ALPINE-CVE-2026-41292, AZL-87030, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-41292, ECHO-a55d-d403-6e56, GHSA-2wvj-gvc7-gfhx, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-41292, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-12-CVE-2026-41292, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-41292

## What is CVE-2026-41292?

CVE-2026-41292 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Nlnetlabs Unbound, published on 20 May 2026. 

### Official description

NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.0 is vulnerable to a degradation of service attack related to parsing long lists of incoming EDNS options. An adversary sending queries with too many EDNS options can hold Unbound threads hostage while they are parsing and creating internal data structures for the options. Coordinated attacks can result in degradation and/or denial of service. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix to limit acceptable incoming EDNS options (100).

Weakness: CWE-1050 (Excessive Platform Resource Consumption within a Loop), CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling), CWE-407 (Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-41292?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Nlnetlabs Unbound.

## How do I fix CVE-2026-41292?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2026-41292 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-41292 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Nlnetlabs Unbound

- [CVE-2026-81642](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-81642/): Heap buffer overflow and possible Remote Code Execution when digesting DNSKEY (critical 9.1)
- [CVE-2026-33278](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-33278/): Possible arbitrary code execution during DNSSEC validation (critical 9.1)
- [CVE-2026-42944](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-42944/): Heap overflow with multiple NSID, COOKIE, PADDING EDNS options (high 8.7)
- [CVE-2026-42959](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-42959/): Crash during DNSSEC validation of malicious content (high 8.7)
- [CVE-2026-82717](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-82717/): CNAME synthesis could lead to heap corruption (high 8.4)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2026-41292 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2026-41292 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Nlnetlabs Unbound, published on 20 May 2026. 
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-41292 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Nlnetlabs Unbound. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-41292/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-41292/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-41292
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-41292
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2026-41292

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-41292/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.