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Vulnerability · Published May 11, 2026 · Assigned by certcc

CVE-2026-5172CVE-2026-5172

High 7.3

In plain English

A high-severity out-of-bounds read in dnsmasq from dnsmasq. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 2.7% (higher than 86% of all known vulnerabilities). Ready-made attack tooling exists: public proof-of-concept code. Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.

Severity (CVSS 3.1)7.3High
Exploit odds (30 days)2.7%top 14.1% of all CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none
Attack tooling1Public PoC

Official description

A buffer overflow in dnsmasq’s extract_addresses() function allows an attacker to trigger a heap out-of-bounds read and crash by exploiting a malformed DNS response, enabling extract_name() to advance the pointer past the record’s end.

Affected packages & fixed versions

EcosystemPackageFixed inAdvisory
AlmaLinux:10dnsmasq2.90-7.el10_2ALSA-2026:19158
AlmaLinux:10dnsmasq-utils2.90-7.el10_2ALSA-2026:19158
Alpine:v3.22dnsmasq2.91-r1ALPINE-CVE-2026-5172
Alpine:v3.23dnsmasq2.91-r1ALPINE-CVE-2026-5172
Alpine:v3.24dnsmasq2.92_p2-r0ALPINE-CVE-2026-5172
Debian:12dnsmasq2.90-4~deb12u2DEBIAN-CVE-2026-5172
Debian:13dnsmasq2.91-1+deb13u1DEBIAN-CVE-2026-5172
Debian:14dnsmasq2.92-5DEBIAN-CVE-2026-5172
Rocky Linux:10dnsmasq0:2.90-7.el10_2RLSA-2026:19158
Ubuntu:22.04:LTSdnsmasq2.90-0ubuntu0.22.04.3UBUNTU-CVE-2026-5172
Ubuntu:24.04:LTSdnsmasq2.90-2ubuntu0.3UBUNTU-CVE-2026-5172
Ubuntu:25.10dnsmasq2.91-1ubuntu0.2UBUNTU-CVE-2026-5172
Ubuntu:26.04:LTSdnsmasq2.92-1ubuntu0.2UBUNTU-CVE-2026-5172

Affected products (as reported)

VendorProductVersions
dnsmasq dnsmasq 0 – before 2.92rel2

Weakness: CWE-125 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

References