CVE-2026-40691

Packet of death for DNSCrypt over TCP

HIGH
7.5
CVSS Score
Published: July 22, 2026 at 01:04 PM UTC
Updated: October 24, 2026 at 01:10 PM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorUnbound

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Severity
HIGH7.5
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.3%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

In Unbound 1.9.0 up to and including 1.25.1, when a DNSCrypt query is received over TCP, the routine that encrypts the reply in place fails to bound the reply length against the destination buffer size. The size clamp that protects the UDP path is not applied on the TCP path, so a reply larger than 65504 bytes is shifted forward by 48 bytes inside a buffer of capacity equal to 'msg-buffer-size', writing past the end of the heap allocation. A single malicious encrypted query crashes the resolver and lead to denial of service. This vulnerability needs Unbound to be compiled with DNSCrypt support ('--enable-dnscrypt') and the 'dnscrypt:' clause to be configured and enabled for the listening interfaces.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

1.9.0 ≤ v < 1.25.21.9.0
Affected range stops below 1.25.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

References (1)

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitAutomatablePartial impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

7.5HIGHNLnet Labs
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusANALYZED
CWE
CWE-122CWE-787

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