CVE-2018-5737

BIND 9.12's serve-stale implementation can cause an assertion failure in rbtdb.c or other undesirable behavior, even if serve-stale is not enabled.

Published Jan 16, 2019 CVSS 3.0 · 5.9 Medium EPSS 10.6% KEV · Not listed
Description
A problem with the implementation of the new serve-stale feature in BIND 9.12 can lead to an assertion failure in rbtdb.c, even when stale-answer-enable is off. Additionally, problematic interaction between the serve-stale feature and NSEC aggressive negative caching can in some cases cause undesirable behavior from named, such as a recursion loop or excessive logging. Deliberate exploitation of this condition could cause operational problems depending on the particular manifestation -- either degradation or denial of service. Affects BIND 9.12.0 and 9.12.1.

Remediation

Vendor Solution

The error which can be exploited in this vulnerability is present in only two public release versions of BIND, 9.12.0 and 9.12.1. If you are running an affected version then upgrade to BIND 9.12.1-P2


Vendor Workaround

Setting "max-stale-ttl 0;" in named.conf will prevent exploitation of this vulnerability (but will effectively disable the serve-stale feature.) Setting "stale-answer enable off;" is not sufficient to prevent exploitation, max-stale-ttl needs to be set to zero.

Tracking

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Advisories

Source ID Title
EUVD EUVD EUVD-2018-17506 A problem with the implementation of the new serve-stale feature in BIND 9.12 can lead to an assertion failure in rbtdb.c, even when stale-answer-enable is off. Additionally, problematic interaction between the serve-stale feature and NSEC aggressive negative caching can in some cases cause undesirable behavior from named, such as a recursion loop or excessive logging. Deliberate exploitation of this condition could cause operational problems depending on the particular manifestation -- either degradation or denial of service. Affects BIND 9.12.0 and 9.12.1.
History

No history.

Weaknesses

Sources

Status
PUBLISHED
Assigner
isc
Published
Updated
Sep 16, 2024, 10:40 PM
Reserved
Jan 17, 2018, 12:00 AM
Status
Modified
Published
Jan 16, 2019, 8:29 PM
Modified
Jun 17, 2026, 2:00 AM
Severity
Moderate
Public date
May 18, 2018, 12:00 AM