CVE-2026-78227CWE-416

CVE-2026-78227

Medium · published September 16, 2026

CVSS v3.1
6.5
EPSS
0%
Percentile
26.2
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

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.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
6.5 · MEDIUM
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:L
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.00340 · 26.2th percentile
Weakness
CWE-416 · Use After Free
Published
2026-09-16T13:17Z
Affected products (1)
ProductVersionsFixed in
nlnetlabs/unbound≥ 1.22.0, < 1.26.11.26.1
References (1)
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 17 SEP 03:32Z
    EPSS moved — → 0%
    epss
  • 16 SEP 08:29Z
    Use-after-free in DoQ stream output buffer on reset re-transmission
    cvelistv5