CVE-2026-55990

Packet of death for a DNSCrypt misconfigured Unbound

CVE-2026-55990 is fixed in unbound on 1 platform, first by DEBIAN-CVE-2026-55990, released July 28, 2026. It is not reported as exploited. Patch Radar priority: Routine.

Routine
CVSS
5.9
Moderate
Exploitation
None reported
No vendor assessment
CISA KEV
Not listed
Not in the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog
EPSS
0.0025
16th percentile

In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.7.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when the 'dnscrypt:' clause lists more 'dnscrypt-provider-cert:' files than there are matching 'dnscrypt-secret-key:' files, Unbound fills only the matched prefix and leaves the tail slots at the '0xdb' fill that libsodium's allocator writes into every allocation. Unbound would then iterate over the number of cert files, not the actual slots, so it walks into a slot with garbage data filled with '0xdb' bytes. Any unauthenticated client that sends one UDP datagram of ≥ 68 bytes whose first 8 bytes are '0xdb' to 'dnscrypt-port' will use that garbage entry which leads to a garbage dereference killing the server. This is a silent faulty configuration that goes unnoticed until triggered with the right client query. Unbound needs to be compiled with DNSCrypt support ('--enable-dnscrypt').

Where it's fixed

ProductFixed inFixReleased
Linux
unbound · Debian 13.5 (trixie) 1.26.1-0+deb13u1 DEBIAN-CVE-2026-55990 Jul 28, 2026
unbound · Debian 14 1.25.2-1 DEBIAN-CVE-2026-55990 Jul 28, 2026
unbound · opensuse-leap 16.0 1.25.2-160000.1.1 OPENSUSE-SU-2026:21550-1 Aug 10, 2026
unbound · sles 15.6 1.25.2-150600.23.19.1 SUSE-SU-2026:3885-1 Aug 31, 2026
unbound · sles 15.7 1.25.2-150600.23.19.1 SUSE-SU-2026:3885-1 Aug 31, 2026
unbound · sles 16.0 1.25.2-160000.1.1 SUSE-SU-2026:23226-1 Aug 10, 2026

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