NVD / CVE Program· CNA NLnet Labs

CVE-2026-12245: Denial of DNS over TLS service by any DoT client

Noroxi assessment

Priority: Monitor (action score 34/100)

The sources we track (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei, GitHub) show no public exploit code or exploitation in the wild.
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days: 0.46% (FIRST EPSS).
Anyone who can reach it over the internet can trigger it. No account or password is required. No user action is required. No special conditions are required; it is repeatable.
According to CISA the attack is automatable: targets can be found by mass scanning.
Fixed version: NLnet Labs NSD 4.14.3.

Low priority for now. Upgrade to NLnet Labs NSD 4.14.3 or later.

Generated automatically from the record's data: CVSS (NVD and CNA), CISA KEV and SSVC, FIRST EPSS, exploit sources, fixed versions. How we calculate it

Primary sources: NVD · CVE.org · FIRST EPSS

NSD from version 4.13.0 has a heap use-after-free bug in logging errors on TLS connections, causing a crash of the server process, which can be triggered trivially by sending a DNS query over a DoT connection, and closing the connection without reading the response.

HighCVSS 8.7 · v4.0—No exploit Fix available

Published: Jun 25, 2026
Updated: Oct 25, 2026
EPSS: 0.4% · 40th percentile
CWE: CWE-416

Report tools

JSON

Action score

Monitor

Low priority for now.

CVSS: 34 / 40 · 8.7 / 10
CISA KEV: 0 / 30 · Not listed
EPSS: 0 / 30 · 0.4%

CISA SSVC decision

Exploitation: none
Automatable: yes
Technical impact: partial

Vulnrichment: CISA's decision-tree inputs.

CNA vs NVD score

NVD: —
CNA · NLnet Labs: 8.7; NVD has not scored this yet; the score shown is the CNA’s.

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

The score given by the assigning authority versus NVD’s independent score. A gap means the severity is contested.

Get told when this record changes

Not in KEV: no record of exploitation in the wild
No public exploit code on record
A fix has been released

If any of these changes, we'll tell you in the daily email digest.

Is your version affected? Check it

Noroxi analysis

What does it mean in your environment?

The assessment above is generated automatically from the record's data; it doesn't know your environment. Our team verifies on your systems whether this vulnerability is actually exploitable and which mitigation is enough.

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Affected systems

Is your version affected?

Pick the product and type the version you run. It's compared with this record's version ranges in your browser; the version isn't sent anywhere.

Vendor	Product	CPE
nlnetlabs	nsd	cpe:2.3:a:nlnetlabs:nsd

Affected versions

NVD version ranges (for catalog products). Add the product to your stack with a version and matching uses these.

nlnetlabs nsd4.13.0 and later · before 4.14.3

Versions reported by the vendor

Affected version ranges reported by the assigning authority (NLnet Labs). Independent of NVD's CPE analysis and usually ahead of it.

NLnet Labs NSD
- 4.13.0 and later · before 4.14.3affected · semver

Package-level exposure

OSV and GitHub Advisory data: ecosystem, package and range. SBOM matching uses this table.

Ecosystem	Package	Affected range	Fix
Alpine:v3.24	nsd	from 4.13.0 · before 4.14.3-r0	4.14.3-r0
Debian:14	nsd	before 4.14.3-1	4.14.3-1
openSUSE:Leap 16.0	nsd	before 4.14.3-bp160.1.1	4.14.3-bp160.1.1
openSUSE:Tumbleweed	nsd	before 4.14.3-1.1	4.14.3-1.1

Same product

nlnetlabs: all records

Other highest-scoring records for the same primary product.

CVE-2026-12244Heap overflow and crash with crafted SVCB RR
34Monitor
CVE-2026-19538Bypass of BLOCKED ACL items on proxy protocol port over TCP or TLS
32Monitor
CVE-2026-19401Remote UDP DoS by sending multiple DNS Cookie options
32Monitor

Published before and after this one in the same product

← EarlierCVE-2012-2978Jul 27, 2012 · query.c in NSD 3.0.x through 3.0.8, 3.1.x through 3.1.1, and 3.2.x before 3.2.12 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL…
23Monitor
← EarlierCVE-2016-6173Feb 9, 2017 · NSD before 4.1.11 allows remote DNS master servers to cause a denial of service (/tmp disk consumption and slave server crash) via a zone…
31Monitor
Later →CVE-2026-12246Jun 25, 2026 · Out of bounds stack write with crafted APL RR
28Monitor

Remediation

Which version to upgrade to

Fix versions compiled from the vendor, package registries and Microsoft. Verify the vendor's note before upgrading.

Product / package	Fixed version	Source
NLnet Labs NSD	4.14.3	Vendor (CNA)
alpine:nsd	4.14.3-r0 · Alpine:v3.24	Package registry (OSV)
debian:nsd	4.14.3-1 · Debian:14	Package registry (OSV)
opensuse:nsd	4.14.3-1.1 · openSUSE:Tumbleweed	Package registry (OSV)

Exploit status

No known public exploit

No public exploit has been observed yet. That doesn't mean you're safe, only that the bar is a little higher.

Research context

For pentesters and researchers: attack profile, score disagreement, timeline, patch commits, credits, variant and chain candidates, bug bounty scope. All derived from existing data; no exploit code.

Timeline

From publication to today: proof of concept, Metasploit module, CISA KEV and fix record. Dates are as reported by the sources.

No dated events beyond publication.

No history yet (it accumulates with the daily EPSS job).

Patch and commit links

Commit, PR and diff links among the references. A starting point for patch-diffing and variant hunting; fixes, not exploits.

No commit or PR link among the references.

Credits

All researchers

Finders, reporters and analysts named in the CNA record. Click a name for that researcher’s other records.

Qifan ZhangPalo Alto Networksfinder

Variant candidates

Same product, same weakness class, within 18 months. If the patch missed the root cause, the sibling bug is here.

No nightly-computed relations.

Chain candidates

An authentication bypass and a privilege-requiring bug in the same product, published close together: combined they may become an unauthenticated path.

—

Bug bounty scope

No known public program.

Source: bounty-targets-data (public HackerOne, Bugcrowd, Intigriti, YesWeHack listings).

Technical details

Attack conditions

Anyone who can reach it over the internet can trigger it.
No account or password is required.
No user action is required.
No special conditions are required; it is repeatable.

If successful

Confidentiality
Integrity
Availability

Attack vector: Network
Attack complexity: Low
Privileges required: None
User interaction: None
Scope: X

Weakness class (CWE)

CWE-416 · Use After Free

CVSS vector

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/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-secondary

Root cause

After a memory region is freed, another reference pointing to it is still used. By then, the same region may have been allocated for different data.

The bug in code

The whole CWE-416 class

A representative example of this vulnerability class. Not the vendor's source code; it shows the faulty pattern and its fix.

Vulnerable

1free(dev->buf);
2/* ... another thread is still running ... */
3process(dev->buf);

Fixed

1lock(&dev->lock);
2free(dev->buf);
3dev->buf = NULL;
4unlock(&dev->lock);

Attack context

MITRE CAPEC attack patterns and ATT&CK techniques for this weakness class (CWE). A starting point for detection rules and threat hunting.

MITRE has no CAPEC/ATT&CK mapping for this CWE.

Change log

Fix✗ → ✓Sep 28, 2026, 10:09 PM UTC

For records you follow, these changes also arrive as notifications. →

References

www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/nsd/CVE-2026-12245.txt

Vendor advisories and official records. Exploit/PoC links are deliberately left out.

All records