CVE-2026-44390
LOWDescription
NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.25.0 has a vulnerability when handling replies with very large RRsets that Unbound needs to perform name compression for. Malicious upstream responses with very large RRsets with records that don't share a suffix above the root can cause Unbound to spend a considerable time applying name compression to downstream replies. This can lead to degraded performance and eventually denial of service in well orchestrated attacks. An adversary can exploit the vulnerability by querying Unbound for the specially crafted contents of a malicious zone with very large RRsets. Before Unbound replies to the query it will try to apply name compression which was an unbounded operation that could lock the CPU until the whole packet was complete. A compression limit was introduced in 1.21.1 for this but it didn't account for the case where records would not share any suffix above the root. That causes Unbound to go in a different code path because of the compression tree lookup failure and eventually not increment the compression counter for those operations. Unbound 1.25.1 contains a patch with a fix that increments the compression counter regardless of the compression tree lookup. This is a complement fix to CVE-2024-8508.
How to fix
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Remediation is compiled from vendor and distribution security advisories. Always confirm against the linked source for your exact version and platform.
CVSS v3 Vector
Exploitability
Impact
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Exploit Intelligence
Moderate risk: more likely to be exploited than 48% of all known CVEs.
References
Related Vulnerabilities
Other CWE-407 vulnerabilities, ordered by exploit likelihood. View all
| CVE | Severity | CVSS | EPSS | Exploited | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2020-27223 | Medium | 5.2 | 78% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2022-36021 | Medium | 5.5 | 61% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2021-33582 | High | 7.5 | 3.1% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2024-43485 | High | 7.5 | 3.1% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2024-43484 | High | 7.5 | 2.9% | - | Fix |
| CVE-2016-10396 | High | 7.5 | 2.9% | - | - |
Common questions
How do I fix CVE-2026-44390?
Published advisories record a fix for 16 affected products. The "How to fix" section on this page lists the fixed version and source advisory for each one, so apply the entry matching what you actually run.
Is CVE-2026-44390 being actively exploited?
Not that we know of. CVE-2026-44390 is not in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Its EPSS score of 0.63% is the estimated probability that it will be exploited in the next 30 days. That is higher than 48% of all scored CVEs.
How severe is CVE-2026-44390?
CVE-2026-44390 has a CVSS v3 base score of 5.3, rated low. CVSS rates the technical impact if the vulnerability is exploited, not how likely that is, so weigh it alongside the exploit-prediction score when you decide what to patch first.
What does CVE-2026-44390 affect?
Published advisories record a fix for python2-unbound (Amazon), python3-unbound (Amazon), python3-unbound-debuginfo (Amazon), unbound (Amazon), and 12 more. Only products with a sourced advisory are listed, so treat this as what we can cite rather than a complete inventory.
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This product uses NVD data but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. EPSS scores courtesy of FIRST.org (https://www.first.org/epss). Source: CISA KEV Catalog. Data as of 2026-09-01.