CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-4438

MediumCVSS 5.4
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.19%

9th percentile - higher than 9% of all known CVEs

Summary

A vulnerability in the GNU C Library (glibc) versions 2.34 through 2.43 causes calls to gethostbyaddr or gethostbyaddr_r with a configured nsswitch.conf specifying the DNS backend to return an invalid DNS hostname, violating the DNS specification.

Risk Assessment

The organization may receive incorrect IP-to-hostname mappings, leading to errors in logs, violations of hostname-based security policies, or malfunctioning applications that depend on correct DNS resolution.

Recommendation

It is recommended to upgrade glibc to version 2.44 or later, which includes a fix for this vulnerability. If an upgrade is not possible, temporarily modify the nsswitch.conf configuration to avoid using the DNS backend for gethostbyaddr.

Other vulnerabilities in GNU C Library

See all
Original NVD description (English source)

Calling gethostbyaddr or gethostbyaddr_r with a configured nsswitch.conf that specifies the library's DNS backend in the GNU C library version 2.34 to version 2.43 could result in an invalid DNS hostname being returned to the caller in violation of the DNS specification.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS