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CVE intelligence

CVE-2026-42960

Vulnerability intelligence

Published May 20, 2026Sources checked Sep 27, 2026
10.0CRITICALCVSS out of 10
What this means

Review the available evidence

CVE-2026-42960 and is rated Critical severity with a CVSS score of 10.0. 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
EPSS0.3%Estimated 30-day exploitation probability
Ransomware useNot markedCISA KEV ransomware field
Threat actors0Source-linked actor relationships
Overview

What is CVE-2026-42960?

NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.0 is vulnerable to poisoning via promiscuous records for the authority section. Promiscuous RRSets that complement DNS replies in the authority section can be used to trick Unbound to cache such records. If an adversary is able to attach such records in a reply (i.e., spoofed packet, fragmentation attack) he would be able to poison Unbound's cache. A malicious actor can exploit the possible poisonous effect by injecting RRSets other than NS that are also accompanied by address records in a reply, for example MX. This could be achieved by trying to spoof a reply packet or fragmentation attacks. Unbound would then accept the relative address records in the additional section and cache them if the authority RRSet has enough trust at this point, i.e., in-zone data for the delegation point. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix that disregards address records from the additional section if they are not explicitly relevant only to authority NS records, mitigating the possible poison effect. This is a complement fix to CVE-2025-11411.