A vulnerability, which was classified as problematic, was found in PowerDNS and PowerDNS Recursor (Domain Name Software) (affected version not known). Affected is some unknown functionality of the component DNS Server. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a resource consumption vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-400. The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource, thereby enabling an actor to influence the amount of resources consumed, eventually leading to the exhaustion of available resources. This is going to have an impact on availability. CVE summarizes:

An issue has been found in PowerDNS before 3.4.11 and 4.0.2, and PowerDNS recursor before 3.7.4 and 4.0.4, allowing a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause an abnormal CPU usage load on the PowerDNS server by sending crafted DNS queries, which might result in a partial denial of service if the system becomes overloaded. This issue is based on the fact that the PowerDNS server parses all records present in a query regardless of whether they are needed or even legitimate. A specially crafted query containing a large number of records can be used to take advantage of that behaviour.

The bug was discovered 12/15/2016. The weakness was presented 09/11/2018 as not defined bug report (Bugzilla). The advisory is shared for download at bugzilla.redhat.com. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2016-7068 since 08/23/2016. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. The exploitation doesn't require any form of authentication. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1499.

The vulnerability was handled as a non-public zero-day exploit for at least 44 days. During that time the estimated underground price was around $0-$5k. The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 96849 (Fedora 25 : pdns (2017-cbd5501d31)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment. It is assigned to the family Fedora Local Security Checks and running in the context l. The commercial vulnerability scanner Qualys is able to test this issue with plugin 175940 (Debian Security Update for pdns (DSA 3764-1)).

Upgrading eliminates this vulnerability. A possible mitigation has been published before and not just after the disclosure of the vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (96849). See 123797, 123891, 123892 and 126386 for similar entries.

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• Domain Name Software

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• PowerDNS
• PowerDNS Recursor

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• open-source

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