Description
An issue has been found in PowerDNS Recursor 4.1.0 up to and including 4.3.0. It allows an attacker (with enough privileges to change the system's hostname) to cause disclosure of uninitialized memory content via a stack-based out-of-bounds read. It only occurs on systems where gethostname() does not have '\0' termination of the returned string if the hostname is larger than the supplied buffer. (Linux systems are not affected because the buffer is always large enough. OpenBSD systems are not affected because the returned hostname always has '\0' termination.) Under some conditions, this issue can lead to the writing of one '\0' byte out-of-bounds on the stack, causing a denial of service or possibly arbitrary code execution.
References (4)
Core 4
Core References
Vendor Advisory x_refsource_confirm
https://doc.powerdns.com/recursor/security-advisories/powerdns-advisory-2020-03.html
Mailing List vendor-advisory
x_refsource_suse
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2020-05/msg00052.html
Mailing List, Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory
x_refsource_fedora
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/PS4ZN5XGENYNFKX7QIIOUCQQHXE37GJF/
Mailing List, Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory
x_refsource_fedora
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/NMP72NJGKBWR5WEBXAWX5KSLQUDFTG6S/
Scores
CVSS v3
8.8
EPSS
0.0003
EPSS Percentile
8.3%
Attack Vector
NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Details
CWE
CWE-125
Status
published
Products (1)
powerdns/recursor
4.1.0 - 4.3.0
Published
May 19, 2020
Tracked Since
Feb 18, 2026