CVE intelligence

CVE-2026-78227

Vulnerability intelligence

Published Sep 16, 2026Sources checked Sep 26, 2026

6.5MEDIUMCVSS out of 10

What this means

Review the available evidence

CVE-2026-78227 and is rated Medium severity with a CVSS score of 6.5. 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-2026-78227?

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.