CVE-2026-56444CWE-772

Degradation of resolution service when 'discard-timeout' and 'serve-expired-client-timeout' are combined in unusual configuration

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 1.20.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when Unbound is configured with 'serve-expired: yes' and 'serve-expired-client-timeout > discard-timeout > 0' (contrary to the suggested values), the discard-timeout branch during the serve expired logic drops an aged client reply without performing the correct accounting for the number of reply addresses for the query. Other identical branches outside of serve expired perform the correct decrement. Since the counter is never decremented in such scenario, it can reach the maximum limit and new clients for duplicate in-flight queries are silently dropped resulting in degradation of resolution service. A malicious actor can exploit the vulnerability by querying the resolver for a client-controlled slow-on-demand authoritative zone that can drive the counter past the threshold. Shipped defaults for 'serve-expired-client-timeout: 1800' and 'discard-timeout: 1900' make the branch unreachable.

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-772 · Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime
Published
2026-07-22T13:10Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 22 JUL 13:10Z
    Degradation of resolution service when 'discard-timeout' and 'serve-expired-client-timeout' are combined in unusual configuration
    cvelistv5