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HIGH

CVE-2026-5856

CVE-2026-5856 — Contiki-NG DNS/mDNS Resolver Out-of-Bounds Read via Unchecked skip_name Traversal Before Transaction-ID Validation

Contiki-NG's DNS/mDNS resolver skip_name() in os/services/resolv/resolv.c walks DNS wire-format name labels with no packet-boundary check, and the caller in newdata() invokes it in a loop iterating nquestions times from the attacker-controlled DNS header before validating the transaction ID. An attacker who sets nquestions higher than the number of complete questions present causes skip_name() to walk past the UDP packet buffer, and the returned pointer is cast to struct dns_answer * for further memory reads. On builds with RESOLV_CONF_SUPPORTS_MDNS enabled, any peer on the local segment can trigger the read unauthenticated via a multicast UDP 5353 packet with no outstanding query required; on standard DNS builds an attacker who can inject a UDP response from port 53 during an outstanding query can trigger the same read. Impact is out-of-bounds read of uip_buf and adjacent memory…

Published Updated Sources: cvelistV5, VulnCheck

Triage

Is it exploited, how likely is exploitation, what does it touch, and how severe do the scoring sources call it.

Exploitation

Unreported

no source claims exploitation

EPSS

0%

chance of exploitation in 30 days

Affects

contiki ng

contiki_ng

CVSS base

7.1

HIGH

CISA SSVC assessment

Three decision points CISA publishes for the CVEs it assesses · SSVC 2.0.3. A stakeholder decision, not a severity score.

CISA

Exploitation

None

none · proof-of-concept · active

Automatable

No

can an attacker script all four kill-chain steps

Technical impact

Partial

partial · total control of the vulnerable component

Affected scope

The catalog records vendors and products as separate lists, not pairs, so which product belongs to which vendor is not something this page can say.

Vendors (1)

contiki ng

Products (1)

contiki ng

Every base score collected

Sources score independently and disagree; each row says who scored it and under which version.

ScoreVersionSeverityExpl.ImpactSource
7.1CVSS 3.1HIGH——cvelistV5

Weakness & attack patterns

  • CWE-125

Detection

Read off the CVSS vector and the weakness class. Starting points, not rules we have tested.

  • Search application, proxy, and WAF logs for requests touching /mDNS, /services/resolv/resolv.c.

References

3 on the record

Elsewhere on this site

Not in any source we poll

Listed rather than left blank: an empty field and an unmeasured one look identical on screen, and only one is a reason to look elsewhere.

  • No confirmed IOCs, IP addresses, domains, file hashes, or malware artifacts supplied.
  • No organization-specific asset inventory, compensating-control status, or patch deployment evidence supplied.
  • No exploit packet captures, log samples, or incident case IDs supplied.