Bug 2506138 (CVE-2026-50046) - CVE-2026-50046 unbound: Unbound: Denial of Service due to freed pointer dereference in DNS-over-TLS handling
Summary: CVE-2026-50046 unbound: Unbound: Denial of Service due to freed pointer deref...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2026-50046
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
low
low
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 2509485
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-07-22 14:02 UTC by OSIDB Bzimport
Modified: 2026-07-30 14:58 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
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Description OSIDB Bzimport 2026-07-22 14:02:07 UTC
In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.15.0 up to and including 1.25.1, the TLS server name used for DNS-over-TLS (DoT) forwarded queries is tied to a struct's ('serviced_query') lifetime but also referenced by another struct ('waiting_tcp'). When the owning struct is jostled out of the mesh while the DoT TCP stream is still handshaking it frees the storage behind the referenced string and if the TLS stream then errors out, it dereferences the freed pointer. The dereference is read-only and the practical impact is a daemon crash resulting in denial of service. A malicious actor that knows a DoT forwarding/stub Unbound's configuration could exploit the vulnerability by quering records in the appropriate zone while keeping Unbound uder pressure so that the jostle logic kicks in. If answers for the vulnerable zone are slow, the likelihood of jostling such queries is higher, although the timing of the jostle needs to be precise. Requirements for a vulnerable Unbound is the existence of a stub/forward zone configured for DoT together with a configured '#authname' suffix on the server identification. The connectivity to the server needs to exhibit a transient failure at the correct time in order to kick off the vulnerable error path.


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