Medium severity · published Oct 3, 2024
CVE-2024-8508
Unbounded name compression could lead to Denial of Service
5.3
CVSS
0.8%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
NLnet Labs Unbound up to and including version 1.21.0 contains a vulnerability when handling replies with very large RRsets that it needs to perform name compression for. Malicious upstreams responses with very large RRsets can cause Unbound to spend a considerable time applying name compression to downstream replies. This can lead to degraded performance and eventually denial of service in well orchestrated attacks. The vulnerability can be exploited by a malicious actor querying Unbound for the specially crafted contents of a malicious zone with very large RRsets. Before Unbound replies to the query it will try to apply name compression which was an unbounded operation that could lock the CPU until the whole packet was complete. Unbound version 1.21.1 introduces a hard limit on the number of name compression calculations it is willing to do per packet. Packets that need more compression will result in semi-compressed packets or truncated packets, even on TCP for huge messages, to avoid locking the CPU for long. This change should not affect normal DNS traffic.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
Low
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.8% · higher than 56% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
UN
Unbound · NLnet Labs
through 1.21.0 · source: vendor, NVD, CISA
DL
Debian Linux · Debian
11.0 · source: NVD
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2024-8508
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-8508
Vendor Advisory
https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2024-8508.txt
Mailing List
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/10/04/5
Mailing List
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/11/msg00009.html
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