All vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-35501

Unbound: Bypass of a configured island trust anchor underneath an insecure parent from an atacker-controlled NSEC record.

NLnet Labs Unbound
CVSS
3.7Low
ExploitationNo known exploitationNot in CISA KEV, which does not prove it is unexploitedCISA KEV
Exploit odds (EPSS)0.11%Chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days, higher than 1% of CVEs. Scored 23 Oct 2026FIRST EPSS
Fixed in1.26.2Fixed versionCVE List
Published21 Oct 2026Updated 21 Oct 2026CVE List

What fixes it

A fixed version on one release line is not the upgrade target for every line. Check your exact version and any vendor backports.

Vendor and government advisories 1

Vendors that say their products are affected, and agencies that issued alerts. Check each for the fixed release of the product you run.

Reports 1

1 outlet mention it. Reports are not confirmation; each links to its source.

Description

When NLnet Labs Unbound 1.0.1 up to and including version 1.26.1 is configured with both a root trust anchor and an additional 'trust-anchor:' for an island-of-security zone whose parent is provably insecure under the root chain, a malicious actor with a forged NSEC reply with the SOA bit cleared can trick Unbound to treat the configured trust island as insecure. This happens because the DNSSEC validator in Unbound accepts and caches the NSEC insecure response bypassing the RRSIG validation that the validator was supposed to do. The acceptance of the NSEC record at the trust anchor apex was allowed due to and old fix for type DS and NSEC queries from clients when trust anchor for that name existed.

Text from CVE List

Affected versions 1

  • Unboundaffected: 1.0.1 before 1.26.2CVE List

References 1