PowerDNS Authoritative up to 4.9.14/5.0.4 Catalog Zone Transfer denial of service

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability labeled as problematic has been found in PowerDNS Authoritative up to 4.9.14/5.0.4. This affects an unknown part of the component Catalog Zone Transfer Handler. The manipulation results in denial of service. This vulnerability is cataloged as CVE-2026-42396. The attack may be launched remotely. There is no exploit available. The affected component should be upgraded.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as problematic has been found in PowerDNS Authoritative up to 4.9.14/5.0.4. Affected is an unknown part of the component Catalog Zone Transfer Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a denial of service vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-404. The product does not release or incorrectly releases a resource before it is made available for re-use. This is going to have an impact on availability. CVE summarizes:

Insufficient Validation of Member Zone Data May Cause Catalog Zone Transfer to Fail

The weakness was shared by ilhamaf. The advisory is shared for download at docs.powerdns.com. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2026-42396 since 04/27/2026. The exploitability is told to be easy. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. Additional levels of successful authentication are needed for exploitation. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1499.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 315941 (Debian dsa-6284 : pdns-backend-bind - security update), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 4.9.15 or 5.0.5 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (315941), EUVD (EUVD-2026-31265) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2026-1625). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Affected

• Open Source PowerDNS

Productinfo

Type

• Domain Name Software

Vendor

• PowerDNS

Name

• Authoritative

Version

• 4.9.0
• 4.9.1
• 4.9.2
• 4.9.3
• 4.9.4
• 4.9.5
• 4.9.6
• 4.9.7
• 4.9.8
• 4.9.9
• 4.9.10
• 4.9.11
• 4.9.12
• 4.9.13
• 4.9.14
• 5.0.0
• 5.0.1
• 5.0.2
• 5.0.3
• 5.0.4

License

• open-source

CPE 2.3info

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CPE 2.2info

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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