CVE-2026-96405 Aggregate DNS name chained pointer decompression work leads to degradation of service.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-96405?
CVE-2026-96405 is a medium-severity vulnerability in NLnet Labs Unbound, published on 21 Oct 2026.
Official description
NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.26.1 limits compression-pointer traversal for each individual domain-name operation but has no aggregate inbound decompression-work budget. Many chained compression pointers in a message results in a lot of CPU usage following them. A malicious actor with recursive-query access and control of an ordinarily delegated authority that serves specially crafted replies can exploit the vulnerability and degrade Unbound's general performance.
Weakness: CWE-770
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-96405?
How do I fix CVE-2026-96405?
Upgrade to a fixed version.
Is CVE-2026-96405 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-96405 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as AZL-110534, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-96405, ECHO-8e22-1547-4478, GHSA-r7j4-9v27-x32x, UBUNTU-CVE-2026-96405.