CVE-2026-55991: nlnet labs unbound Signed to Unsigned Conversion Error

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-55991 is a medium (CVSS 5.9) Signed to Unsigned Conversion Error vulnerability in nlnet labs unbound. EPSS estimates a 0.36% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 28.8% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 22-07-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 16-09-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

In NLnet Labs Unbound 1.22.0 up to and including 1.25.1, a remote unauthenticated client can trigger a libngtcp2 assertion (if compiled with assertions on) and terminate the entire Unbound process using a single DNS-over-QUIC (DoQ) connection and one normal DNS query. This is caused by an erroneous error value passed to libngtcp2. When 'ngtcp2_conn_writev_stream()' returns 'NGTCP2_ERR_STREAM_DATA_BLOCKED', Unbound continues to call 'ngtcp2_ccerr_set_application_error()' with a '-1' error value. The 'int' literal '-1' is implicitly converted to the function's 'uint64_t error_code' parameter as '0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF'. The follow-on 'ngtcp2_conn_write_connection_close()' serialises that value as a QUIC variable-length integer; because '2^64-1' exceeds the 62-bit varint ceiling, 'ngtcp2_put_uvarintlen()' fails 'assert(n < 4611686018427387904ULL)' and the whole resolver process aborts. A remote, unauthenticated DoQ client can trigger this deterministically with a single QUIC connection by advertising 'initial_max_stream_data_bidi_local = 1' in its transport parameters and sending one DoQ query without ever reading the stream.

• CWE-195Signed to Unsigned Conversion ErrorThe product uses a signed primitive and performs a cast to an unsigned primitive, which can produce an unexpected value if the value of the signed primitive can not be represented using an unsigned primitive.