CVE-2026-55991CWE-195

Remote DNS-over-QUIC (DoQ) flow-control assertion failure in libngtcp2

Medium · published July 22, 2026

CVSS v3.1
5.9
EPSS
0%
Percentile
29.2
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.22.0 up to and including 1.25.1, a remote unauthenticated client can trigger a libngtcp2 assertion (if compiled with assertions on) and terminate the entire Unbound process using a single DNS-over-QUIC (DoQ) connection and one normal DNS query. This is caused by an erroneous error value passed to libngtcp2. When 'ngtcp2_conn_writev_stream()' returns 'NGTCP2_ERR_STREAM_DATA_BLOCKED', Unbound continues to call 'ngtcp2_ccerr_set_application_error()' with a '-1' error value. The 'int' literal '-1' is implicitly converted to the function's 'uint64_t error_code' parameter as '0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF'. The follow-on 'ngtcp2_conn_write_connection_close()' serialises that value as a QUIC variable-length integer; because '2^64-1' exceeds the 62-bit varint ceiling, 'ngtcp2_put_uvarintlen()' fails 'assert(n < 4611686018427387904ULL)' and the whole resolver process aborts. A remote, unauthenticated DoQ client can trigger this deterministically with a single QUIC connection by advertising 'initial_max_stream_data_bidi_local = 1' in its transport parameters and sending one DoQ query without ever reading the stream.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
5.9 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00365 · 29.2th percentile
Weakness
CWE-195 · Signed to Unsigned Conversion Error
Published
2026-07-22T13:10Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 22 JUL 13:10Z
    Remote DNS-over-QUIC (DoQ) flow-control assertion failure in libngtcp2
    cvelistv5