Updates released this week by the Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) for the DNS software BIND address two vulnerabilities, including a new high-severity issue that can be exploited remotely.
BIND 9.9.9-P3, 9.10.4-P3 and 9.11.0rc3 patch a previously undisclosed denial-of-service (DoS) flaw that can be exploited using specially crafted DNS request packets. The security hole, tracked as CVE-2016-2776, was uncovered by the ISC and affects all servers that can receive request packets from any source.
“Testing by ISC has uncovered a critical error condition which can occur when a nameserver is constructing a response. A defect in the rendering of messages into packets can cause named to exit with an assertion failure in buffer.c while constructing a response to a query that meets certain criteria,” ISC explained in its advisory. “This assertion can be triggered even if the apparent source address isn’t allowed to make queries (i.e. doesn’t match ‘allow-query’).”
Advance notifications about this vulnerability were sent out on September 14. There is no evidence that the weakness has been exploited in attacks, but users have been advised to update their BIND installations.
The latest BIND releases also patch a medium severity DoS issue (CVE-2016-2775) that was disclosed in mid-July.
“If the lightweight resolver is asked to resolve a query name which, when combined with a search list entry, exceeds the maximum allowable length, the server can terminate due to an error,” ISC described the flaw. “A server which is affected by this defect will terminate with a segmentation fault error, resulting in a denial of service to client programs attempting to resolve names.”
Users have been informed that the details of this vulnerability are publicly available in a bug repository operated by Red Hat.
Related: DoS Vulnerability Patched in BIND
Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.
More from Eduard Kovacs
- ICS Cybersecurity Firm Opscura Launches With $9.4 Million in Series A Funding
- Patch Released for Actively Exploited GoAnywhere MFT Zero-Day
- VMware Says No Evidence of Zero-Day Exploitation in ESXiArgs Ransomware Attacks
- Critical Baicells Device Vulnerability Can Expose Telecoms Networks to Snooping
- SecurityWeek Analysis: Over 450 Cybersecurity M&A Deals Announced in 2022
- VMware ESXi Servers Targeted in Ransomware Attack via Old Vulnerability
- High-Severity Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Patched in VMware Workstation
- GoAnywhere MFT Users Warned of Zero-Day Exploit
Latest News
- Germany Appoints Central Bank IT Chief to Head Cybersecurity
- OpenSSL Ships Patch for High-Severity Flaws
- Software Supply Chain Security Firm Lineaje Raises $7 Million
- ICS Cybersecurity Firm Opscura Launches With $9.4 Million in Series A Funding
- Vulnerability Provided Access to Toyota Supplier Management Network
- Patch Released for Actively Exploited GoAnywhere MFT Zero-Day
- Linux Variant of Cl0p Ransomware Emerges
- VMware Says No Evidence of Zero-Day Exploitation in ESXiArgs Ransomware Attacks
