CVE-2018-14644 Denial of service in pdns
Remote attackers can cause DNSSEC validation failures and service denial by exploiting meta-type query handling in PowerDNS Recursor.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2018-14644?
CVE-2018-14644 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Powerdns Recursor, published on 9 Nov 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 PowerDNS Recursor from 4.0.0 up to and including 4.1.4. A remote attacker sending a DNS query for a meta-type like OPT can lead to a zone being wrongly cached as failing DNSSEC validation. It only arises if the parent zone is signed, and all the authoritative servers for that parent zone answer with FORMERR to a query for at least one of the meta-types. As a result, subsequent queries from clients requesting DNSSEC validation will be answered with a ServFail.
Weakness: CWE-20
Which versions are affected by CVE-2018-14644?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Powerdns Recursor.
How do I fix CVE-2018-14644?
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-2018-14644 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2018-14644 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in Powerdns Recursor
- CVE-2009-4009 Memory corruption in n/a
- CVE-2020-10030 Memory corruption in n/a
- CVE-2025-59023 Crafted delegations or IP fragments can poison cached delegations in Recursor
- CVE-2025-59030 Insufficient validation of incoming notifies over TCP can lead to a denial of service in Recursor
- CVE-2023-22617 Denial of service in n/a
Sources
Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2018-14644, GHSA-2268-76c3-x85m, UBUNTU-CVE-2018-14644.