The DNS implementation of PowerDNS 2.9.16 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a compressed DNS packet with a label length byte with an incorrect offset, which could trigger an infinite loop.

Information disclosure via CORS misconfiguration

When the internal webserver is enabled (default is disabled), an attacker might be able to trick an administrator logged to the dashboard into visiting a malicious website and extract information about the running configuration from the dashboard. The root cause of the issue is a misconfiguration of the Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) policy.

Out-of-bounds read when parsing DNS packets via Lua

An attacker might be able to trigger an out-of-bounds read by sending a crafted DNS response packet, when custom Lua code uses newDNSPacketOverlay to parse DNS packets. The out-of-bounds read might trigger a crash, leading to a denial of service, or access unrelated memory, leading to potential information disclosure.

DNS over HTTPS ACL bypass

When the early_acl_drop (earlyACLDrop in Lua) option is disabled (default is enabled) on a DNS over HTTPs frontend using the nghttp2 provider, the ACL check is skipped, allowing all clients to send DoH queries regardless of the configured ACL.

Unbounded memory allocation for DoQ and DoH3

An attacker might be able to trick DNSdist into allocating too much memory while processing DNS over QUIC or DNS over HTTP/3 payloads, resulting in a denial of service. In setups with a large quantity of memory available this usually results in an exception and the QUIC connection is properly closed, but in some cases the system might enter an out-of-memory state instead and terminate the process.

Out-of-bounds write when rewriting large DNS packets

An attacker might be able to trigger an out-of-bounds write by sending crafted DNS responses to a DNSdist using the DNSQuestion:changeName or DNSResponse:changeName methods in custom Lua code. In some cases the rewritten packet might become larger than the initial response and even exceed 65535 bytes, potentially leading to a crash resulting in denial of service.

Use after free when parsing EDNS options in Lua

An attacker might be able to trigger a use-after-free by sending crafted DNS queries to a DNSdist using the DNSQuestion:getEDNSOptions method in custom Lua code. In some cases DNSQuestion:getEDNSOptions might refer to a version of the DNS packet that has been modified, thus triggering a use-after-free and potentially a crash resulting in denial of service.

Crafted responses can lead to a denial of service in Recursor if recursive forwarding is configured

A crafted response from an upstream server the recursor has been configured to forward-recurse to can cause a Denial of Service in the Recursor. The default configuration of the Recursor does not use recursive forwarding and is not affected.

Crafted responses can lead to a denial of service due to cache inefficiencies in the Recursor

An attacker can publish a zone containing specific Resource Record Sets. Repeatedly processing and caching results for these sets can lead to a denial of service.

Denial of service via crafted DoH exchange in PowerDNS DNSdist

In some circumstances, when DNSdist is configured to use the nghttp2 library to process incoming DNS over HTTPS queries, an attacker might be able to cause a denial of service by crafting a DoH exchange that triggers an unbounded I/O read loop, causing an unexpected consumption of CPU resources.

A Recursor configured to send out ECS enabled queries can be sensitive to spoofing attempts

An attacker spoofing answers to ECS enabled requests sent out by the Recursor has a chance of success higher than non-ECS enabled queries. The updated version include various mitigations against spoofing attempts of ECS enabled queries by chaining ECS enabled requests and enforcing stricter validation of the received answers. The most strict mitigation done when the new setting outgoing.edns_subnet_harden (old style name edns-subnet-harden) is enabled.

Denial of service via crafted TCP exchange

In some circumstances, when DNSdist is configured to allow an unlimited number of queries on a single, incoming TCP connection from a client, an attacker can cause a denial of service by crafting a TCP exchange that triggers an exhaustion of the stack and a crash of DNSdist, causing a denial of service. The remedy is: upgrade to the patched 1.9.10 version. A workaround is to restrict the maximum number of queries on incoming TCP connections to a safe value, like 50, via the setMaxTCPQueriesPerConnection setting. We would like to thank Renaud Allard for bringing this issue to our attention.

Denial of service via crafted DoH exchange

When DNSdist is configured to provide DoH via the nghttp2 provider, an attacker can cause a denial of service by crafting a DoH exchange that triggers an illegal memory access (double-free) and crash of DNSdist, causing a denial of service. The remedy is: upgrade to the patched 1.9.9 version. A workaround is to temporarily switch to the h2o provider until DNSdist has been upgraded to a fixed version. We would like to thank Charles Howes for bringing this issue to our attention.

Transfer requests received over DoH can lead to a denial of service in DNSdist

When incoming DNS over HTTPS support is enabled using the nghttp2 provider, and queries are routed to a tcp-only or DNS over TLS backend, an attacker can trigger an assertion failure in DNSdist by sending a request for a zone transfer (AXFR or IXFR) over DNS over HTTPS, causing the process to stop and thus leading to a Denial of Service. DNS over HTTPS is not enabled by default, and backends are using plain DNS (Do53) by default.

A crafted zone can lead to an illegal memory access in the PowerDNS Recursor

An attacker can publish a zone containing specific Resource Record Sets. Processing and caching results for these sets can lead to an illegal memory accesses and crash of the Recursor, causing a denial of service. The remedy is: upgrade to the patched 5.2.1 version. We would like to thank Volodymyr Ilyin for bringing this issue to our attention.

HTML injection in the web dashboard

An attacker might be able to inject HTML content into the internal web dashboard by sending crafted DNS queries to a DNSdist instance where domain-based dynamic rules have been enabled via either DynBlockRulesGroup:setSuffixMatchRule or DynBlockRulesGroup:setSuffixMatchRuleFFI.

Internal logic flaw in cache management can lead to a denial of service in PowerDNS Recursor

An attacker can trigger an assertion failure by requesting crafted DNS records, waiting for them to be inserted into the records cache, then send a query with qtype set to ANY.

Insufficient validation of incoming notifies over TCP can lead to a denial of service in Recursor

An attacker can trigger the removal of cached records by sending a NOTIFY query over TCP.

bind9: Preparing an NSEC3 closest encloser proof can exhaust CPU resources

The Closest Encloser Proof aspect of the DNS protocol (in RFC 5155 when RFC 9276 guidance is skipped) allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption for SHA-1 computations) via DNSSEC responses in a random subdomain attack, aka the "NSEC3" issue. The RFC 5155 specification implies that an algorithm must perform thousands of iterations of a hash function in certain situations.

bind9: KeyTrap - Extreme CPU consumption in DNSSEC validator

Certain DNSSEC aspects of the DNS protocol (in RFC 4033, 4034, 4035, 6840, and related RFCs) allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption) via one or more DNSSEC responses, aka the "KeyTrap" issue. One of the concerns is that, when there is a zone with many DNSKEY and RRSIG records, the protocol specification implies that an algorithm must evaluate all combinations of DNSKEY and RRSIG records.