Possible insecure NXDOMAIN for non-existing records under a configured island trust anchor underneath an insecure parent.

When NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.26.1 is configured with both a root trust anchor and an additional 'trust-anchor:' for an island-of-security zone whose parent is provably insecure under the root chain, a malicious actor who can deliver one forged NXDOMAIN response for a name inside the island, with the NSEC/SOA RRSIG 'SignerName' set to the insecure parent, tricks Unbound's validator to use the root trust anchor instead, and consecutively the insecure parent, thus causing that record to be treated as insecure and denying existence for records in the trust island.

Source published

21 Oct 2026 08:57:11 UTC

Source modified

29 Oct 2026 19:06:43 UTC

Observed here

29 Oct 2026 21:14:49 UTC

Source terms

CVE Program Terms of Use

Original source record · Cite this exact observation · Complete original publisher JSON

This view projects the publisher's source fields for reading; the original JSON retains additional fields and CVE enrichment containers. Attribution: cve-program · CVE Program Terms of Use. Source text is retained; field grouping and change labels are provided by ChangeIntel.

CVSS 3.1 · 6.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:H