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BIND 9.3.0 vulnerable to denial of service in validator code

Vulnerability Note VU#938617

Original Release Date: 2005-01-25 | Last Revised: 2005-06-21

Overview

A vulnerability in the BIND name server could allow a remote attacker to cause a denial of service against an affected system.

Description

The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) is a popular Domain Name System (DNS) implementation from Internet Systems Consortium (ISC). BIND supports the DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC), including the NextSECure (NSEC) RDATA Format defined by RFC3845. An incorrect assumption in the validator function authvalidated()can result in an internal consistancy test failing and named exiting. An attacker with the ability to craft specific DNS packets could exploit this vulnerability to cause a denial of service. This vulnerability only affects BIND version 9.3.0.

Impact

A remote attacker may be able to cause the name server daemon to exit prematurely, thereby causing a denial of service for DNS operations.

Solution

Apply a patch from the vendor

Patches have been released in response to this issue. Please see the Systems Affected section of this document.

Upgrade

Users who compile their own versions of BIND from the original ISC source code are encouraged to upgrade to BIND version 9.3.1, which includes a patch for this issue.

Workarounds


ISC recommends that users that are unable to apply the patch ensure that dnssec validation is turned off (it is off by default) at the options/view level. The relevant BIND configuration directive is:

dnssec-enable no;

Vendor Information

938617
 

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References

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Joao Damas of the Internet Systems Consortium for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Chad Dougherty based on information provided by ISC.

Other Information

CVE IDs: CVE-2005-0034
Severity Metric: 1.91
Date Public: 2005-01-25
Date First Published: 2005-01-25
Date Last Updated: 2005-06-21 13:36 UTC
Document Revision: 20

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