CVE-2026-5856

Technical Description

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, disclosing memory contents or crashing the resolver.

Remediation

Check the references section for vendor advisories, patches, and mitigation guidance. If immediate patching is not possible, review the CVSS vector to understand the attack surface and apply compensating controls such as network segmentation or access restrictions.

References