PowerDNS Authoritative Server 3.3.0 up to 4.1.4 excluding 4.1.5 and 4.0.6, and PowerDNS Recursor 3.2 up to 4.1.4 excluding 4.1.5 and 4.0.9,

Affected versions

NVD version ranges (for catalog products). Add the product to your stack with a version and matching uses these.

• powerdns authoritative3.3 and later · up to 4.1.4 inclusive
• powerdns recursor3.2 and later · up to 4.1.4 inclusive

Versions reported by the vendor

Affected version ranges reported by the assigning authority (redhat). Independent of NVD's CPE analysis and usually ahead of it.

• The PowerDNS Project pdns

  • 3.3.0 to 4.1.4, excluding 4.1.5 and 4.0.6affected

• The PowerDNS Project pdns-recursor

  • 3.2 to 4.1.4, excluding 4.1.5 and 4.0.9affected

Package-level exposure

OSV and GitHub Advisory data: ecosystem, package and range. SBOM matching uses this table.

Other highest-scoring records for the same primary product.

• CVE-2015-1868The label decompression functionality in PowerDNS Recursor 3.5.x, 3.6.x before 3.6.3, and 3.7.x before 3.7.2 and Authoritative (Auth) Server
  55Plan
• CVE-2016-5427PowerDNS (aka pdns) Authoritative Server before 3.4.10 does not properly handle a .
  49Plan
• CVE-2020-24698An issue was discovered in PowerDNS Authoritative through 4.3.0 when --enable-experimental-gss-tsig is used.
  40Plan

Published before and after this one in the same product

• ← EarlierCVE-2016-7074Sep 11, 2018 · An issue has been found in PowerDNS before 3.4.11 and 4.0.2, and PowerDNS recursor before 4.0.4, allowing an attacker in position of man-in-
  23Monitor
• ← EarlierCVE-2016-2120Nov 1, 2018 · An issue has been found in PowerDNS Authoritative Server versions up to and including 3.4.10, 4.0.1 allowing an authorized user to crash the
  27Monitor
• Later →CVE-2018-14626Nov 29, 2018 · PowerDNS Authoritative Server 4.1.0 up to 4.1.4 inclusive and PowerDNS Recursor 4.0.0 up to 4.1.4 inclusive are vulnerable to a packet cache
  31Monitor

FIRST EPSS daily score; only changes of 0.01 or more are recorded (step chart).

Root cause

Code that parses nested structures sets no depth or size limit. A small input can turn into a disproportionate processing load.

A representative example of this vulnerability class. Not the vendor's source code; it shows the faulty pattern and its fix.

1function expand(node) {2  return node.children.map(expand);3}

1const MAX_DEPTH = 32;2function expand(node, depth = 0) {3  if (depth > MAX_DEPTH) throw new Error("too deep");4  return node.children.map((c) => expand(c, depth + 1));5}

Attack context

MITRE CAPEC attack patterns and ATT&CK techniques for this weakness class (CWE). A starting point for detection rules and threat hunting.