CVE-2015-5230 Denial of service in PowerDNS Authoritative Server

What is CVE-2015-5230?

CVE-2015-5230 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 15 Jan 2020. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

The DNS packet parsing/generation code in PowerDNS (aka pdns) Authoritative Server 3.4.x before 3.4.6 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via crafted query packets.

Weakness: CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2015-5230?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Powerdns Authoritative.

How do I fix CVE-2015-5230?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, then put limits on request size, rate and nesting depth so one client cannot exhaust the service. More about Denial of service.

Is CVE-2015-5230 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2015-5230 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

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• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2015-5230, DSA-3347-1, GHSA-q4mr-9hrx-q3wc.