Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-40211 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-40211 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-40211?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5.3, published 25 June 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Powerdns Dnsdist 1.9.0 to 1.9.14, 2.0.0 to 2.0.6.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-40211?
- A patch was published on 2026-06-25: Fixed in versions 1.9.15 and 2.0.7 Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
- How is CVE-2026-40211 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a network appliance.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-40211?
- Check whether you run Powerdns Dnsdist at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
A vulnerability in the DNS over HTTP/3 (DoH3) implementation of PowerDNS DNSdist allows an unauthenticated remote attacker to trigger an exception by sending crafted queries. This exception prevents internal buffers from being freed immediately; instead, they remain allocated until the underlying QUIC connection is terminated. By opening a large number of concurrent DoH3 streams, an attacker can exhaust available system memory, resulting in an out-of-memory (OOM) condition and a denial of service. The issue is rooted in the DoH3 processing logic within dnsdist-crypto.cc and is fixed in versions 1.9.15 and 2.0.7.
Affected products
- PowerDNS DNSdist 1.9.0 to 1.9.14, 2.0.0 to 2.0.6
Timeline
- 2026-04-09: disclosed: Discovery date
- 2026-06-25: advisory: Public advisory released by PowerDNS
- 2026-06-25: patched: Fixed in versions 1.9.15 and 2.0.7