CVE intelligence

CVE-2026-39821

Vulnerability intelligence

Published May 22, 2026Sources checked Sep 27, 2026

9.6CRITICALCVSS out of 10

What this means

Review the available evidence

CVE-2026-39821 and is rated Critical severity with a CVSS score of 9.6. It is not in the current CISA KEV record we collected. That does not prove exploitation has not occurred.

CISA KEVNot listedBased on the latest collected catalog

EPSS0.7%Estimated 30-day exploitation probability

Ransomware useNot markedCISA KEV ransomware field

Threat actors0Source-linked actor relationships

Overview

What is CVE-2026-39821?

The ToASCII and ToUnicode functions incorrectly accept Punycode-encoded labels that decode to an ASCII-only label. For example, ToUnicode("xn--example-.com") incorrectly returns the name "example.com" rather than an error. This behavior can lead to privilege escalation in programs using the idna package. For example, a program which performs privilege checks on the ASCII hostname may reject "example.com" but permit "xn--example-.com". If that program subsequently converts the ASCII hostname to Unicode, it will inadvertently permits access to the Unicode name "example.com".