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Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2026-123596 json

Hickory DNS through 0.26.0-alpha.1 DNSSEC Validation Bypass via Ancestor-Delegation NSEC

published 2mo ago modified yesterday also EUVD-2026-119355 , GHSA-3r6v-f3jh-vvqm

Unreviewed: the maintainers' own advisory

Published by the maintainers on their GitHub repository hickory-dns/hickory-dns. GitHub has not reviewed it into the GitHub Advisory Database, so the affected packages and versions are the maintainers' word. Read the full advisory on GitHub.

cvss
8.8
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.2%
EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 8%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Hickory DNS hickory-proto through 0.26.0-alpha.1 and hickory-net 0.26.0-beta.1 before 0.26.2 contain a DNSSEC validation flaw in the validating recursor's NSEC handler that accepts parent-side ancestor-delegation NSEC records as proof of nonexistence for names below the zone cut. An on-path attacker, rogue parent nameserver, or attacker winning a port and TXID race can deliver one forged NXDOMAIN response built from genuinely signed parent NSEC records, causing authenticated denial of existing child-zone names cached for the negative TTL.

Patch / fix

  • hickory-dns hickory-dns 0.26.2
  • rust-hickory-net Debian 14 0.26.3-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-123596

Is CVE-2026-123596 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

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Exploit prediction

0.19% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 8% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-11).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 8.7 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CNA 4.0 8.7 CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • hickory-dns hickory-dns

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-345 Insufficient Verification of Data Authenticity

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

The maintainers of hickory-dns/hickory-dns published their own advisory on GitHub. Reviewed sources take precedence over it.