# CVE-2017-15094: Denial of service in PowerDNS Recursor

> Attackers can cause a memory leak and potential denial of service in PowerDNS Recursor by sending crafted DNSSEC ECDSA keys when validation is enabled.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.9 (`CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** Not needed
- **Fix available:** Yes
- **Published:** 23 Jan 2018
- **Updated:** 16 Sep 2024
- **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2017-15094, GHSA-q452-p523-w4f9, UBUNTU-CVE-2017-15094

## What is CVE-2017-15094?

CVE-2017-15094 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Powerdns Recursor, published on 23 Jan 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

An issue has been found in the DNSSEC parsing code of PowerDNS Recursor from 4.0.0 up to and including 4.0.6 leading to a memory leak when parsing specially crafted DNSSEC ECDSA keys. These keys are only parsed when validation is enabled by setting dnssec to a value other than off or process-no-validate (default).

Weakness: CWE-772 (Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime), CWE-401 (Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-15094?

It affects 1 product.


Products: Powerdns Recursor.

## How do I fix CVE-2017-15094?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2017-15094 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-15094 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Powerdns Recursor

- [CVE-2009-4009](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2009-4009/): Memory corruption in n/a (critical 10.0)
- [CVE-2020-10030](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2020-10030/): Memory corruption in n/a (high 8.8)
- [CVE-2025-59023](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-59023/): Crafted delegations or IP fragments can poison cached delegations in Recursor (high 8.2)
- [CVE-2025-59030](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-59030/): Insufficient validation of incoming notifies over TCP can lead to a denial of service in Recursor (high 7.5)
- [CVE-2023-22617](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-22617/): Denial of service in n/a (high 7.5)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2017-15094 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2017-15094 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Powerdns Recursor, published on 23 Jan 2018. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-15094 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Powerdns Recursor. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-15094/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-15094/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2017-15094
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2017-15094
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2017-15094

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2017-15094/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.