What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-78227: Use-after-free in DoQ stream output buffer on reset re-transmission
- Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2026-09-16 · updated 2026-09-23
- Weakness: CWE-416
Description
NLnet Labs Unbound 1.22.0 up to and including 1.26.1, has a use-after-free vulnerability when compiled for DNS-over-QUIC support with '--with-libngtcp2'. Each DoQ stream owns an output buffer that holds the DNS response. ngtcp2's retransmission buffer keeps a shallow pointer into the output buffer for as long as a STREAM frame may be resent. On a client RESET_STREAM, the output buffer is freed but ngtcp2 still holds the matching retransmission entries. The next PTO timeout makes ngtcp2 re-encode the STREAM frame and copy from the freed buffer. A malicious actor that can query Unbound over DoQ and that withholds ACKs, sends RESET_STREAM, and waits for PTO, reaches this use-after-free with no privilege. This leads to retransmissions against freed memory and eventually an abnormal server exit under a 20-query spray.
Affected products
- NLnet Labs Unbound: from 1.22.0 before 1.26.1 — fixed in 1.26.1
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: NLnet Labs Unbound 1.26.1. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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