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OpenAdvisories
Medium · 6.9 CVE-2026-44390 EUVD-2026-31088GHSA-6522-r5fq-99gw

Unbounded name compression in certain cases causes degradation of service

Published May 20, 2026 · Updated Sep 1, 2026 · Assigned by NLnet Labs

Description

NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.0 has a vulnerability when handling replies with very large RRsets that Unbound needs to perform name compression for. Malicious upstream responses with very large RRsets with records that don't share a suffix above the root can cause Unbound to spend a considerable time applying name compression to downstream replies. This can lead to degraded performance and eventually denial of service in well orchestrated attacks. An adversary can exploit the vulnerability by querying Unbound for the specially crafted contents of a malicious zone with very large RRsets. Before Unbound replies to the query it will try to apply name compression which was an unbounded operation that could lock the CPU until the whole packet was complete. A compression limit was introduced in 1.21.1 for this but it didn't account for the case where records would not share any suffix above the root. That causes Unbound to go in a different code path because of the compression tree lookup failure and eventually not increment the compression counter for those operations. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix that increments the compression counter regardless of the compression tree lookup. This is a complement fix to CVE-2024-8508.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
NLnet Labs Unbound < 1.25.1 1.25.1

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 unbound 1.25.1-1 —
Debian 13 unbound 1.22.0-2+deb13u3 —
Debian 12 unbound No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS unbound 1.24.2-1ubuntu2.1 —
Ubuntu 25.10 unbound 1.22.0-2ubuntu2.3 —
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS unbound 1.19.2-1ubuntu3.8 —
Ubuntu 22.04 LTS unbound 1.13.1-1ubuntu5.15 —
Show 4 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu Pro 20.04 LTS unbound No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS unbound No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS unbound No fix yet —
Ubuntu Pro 14.04 LTS unbound No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
RHEL 10 unbound +6 1.24.2-7.el10_2.2 RHSA-2026:36320
RHEL 9 unbound +4 1.24.2-3.el9_8.2 RHSA-2026:36777
RHEL 8 unbound +3 1.16.2-5.12.el8_10 RHSA-2026:37282
Show 1 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Red Hat Hardened Images 1 unbound +7 1.25.1-2.hum1 RHSA-2026:24013

AlmaLinux

Errata ↗
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
AlmaLinux 10 unbound +6 1.24.2-7.el10_2.2 ALSA-2026:36320
AlmaLinux 9 unbound +4 1.24.2-3.el9_8.2 ALSA-2026:36777
AlmaLinux 8 unbound +3 1.16.2-5.12.el8_10 ALSA-2026:37282

Rocky Linux

Errata ↗
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Rocky Linux 10 unbound 1.24.2-7.el10_2.2 RLSA-2026:36320
Rocky Linux 9 unbound 1.24.2-3.el9_8.2 RLSA-2026:36777
Rocky Linux 8 unbound 1.16.2-5.12.el8_10 RLSA-2026:37282
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
SLES 15 SP5 unbound 1.20.0-150100.10.25.1 SUSE-SU-2026:2369-1
SLES 15 SP4 unbound 1.20.0-150100.10.25.1 SUSE-SU-2026:2369-1
Show 8 more (older releases, extended support, other products)
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
SLES for SAP 16.0 unbound 1.24.1-160000.2.1 SUSE-SU-2026:22160-1
SLES for SAP 15 SP5 unbound 1.20.0-150100.10.25.1 SUSE-SU-2026:2369-1
SLES for SAP 15 SP4 unbound 1.20.0-150100.10.25.1 SUSE-SU-2026:2369-1
SLES 16.0 unbound 1.24.1-160000.2.1 SUSE-SU-2026:22160-1
SLE Micro 6.2 unbound 1.24.1-160000.2.1 SUSE-SU-2026:22213-1
SLE Micro 5.5 unbound 1.20.0-150100.10.25.1 SUSE-SU-2026:2369-1
SLE HPC 15 SP5 unbound 1.20.0-150100.10.25.1 SUSE-SU-2026:2369-1
SLE HPC 15 SP4 unbound 1.20.0-150100.10.25.1 SUSE-SU-2026:2369-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Tumbleweed unbound 1.25.1-1.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:10903-1
openSUSE Leap 16.0 unbound 1.24.1-160000.2.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:21083-1
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Alpine v3.24 unbound 1.25.1-r0 —
Alpine v3.23 unbound 1.25.2-r0 —
Alpine v3.22 unbound 1.25.2-r0 —

Amazon Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Amazon Linux 2023 unbound +5 1.17.1-1.amzn2023.0.12 ALAS2023-2026-1756
Amazon Linux 2 unbound +4 1.7.3-15.amzn2.0.14 ALAS2-2026-3322

Azure Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Azure Linux 3 unbound 1.25.1-1 —

Oracle Linux

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Oracle Linux 10 unbound +6 1.24.2-7.el10_2.2 ELSA-2026-36320
Oracle Linux 9 unbound +4 1.24.2-3.el9_8.2 ELSA-2026-36777
Oracle Linux 8 unbound +3 1.16.2-5.12.el8_10 ELSA-2026-37282

Advisories 22

References