# CVE-2023-2911: Denial of service in BIND 9

> Attackers can crash the BIND 9 DNS resolver by exhausting recursive client quotas when specific stale-answer settings are enabled.

- **Severity:** High 7.5 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/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:** 21 Jun 2023
- **Updated:** 13 Feb 2025
- **Also known as:** ALPINE-CVE-2023-2911, AZL-27237, DEBIAN-CVE-2023-2911, GHSA-rrr5-v5h9-fpwp, UBUNTU-CVE-2023-2911

## What is CVE-2023-2911?

CVE-2023-2911 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 21 Jun 2023. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

### Official description

If the `recursive-clients` quota is reached on a BIND 9 resolver configured with both `stale-answer-enable yes;` and `stale-answer-client-timeout 0;`, a sequence of serve-stale-related lookups could cause `named` to loop and terminate unexpectedly due to a stack overflow.
This issue affects BIND 9 versions 9.16.33 through 9.16.41, 9.18.7 through 9.18.15, 9.16.33-S1 through 9.16.41-S1, and 9.18.11-S1 through 9.18.15-S1.

Weakness: CWE-787 (Out-of-bounds Write)

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2023-2911?

It affects 9 products.


Products: Debian Debian Linux, Fedoraproject Fedora, Isc Bind, Netapp Active Iq Unified Manager, Netapp H300s Firmware, Netapp H410c Firmware, Netapp H410s Firmware, Netapp H500s Firmware, Netapp H700s Firmware.

## How do I fix CVE-2023-2911?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

## Is CVE-2023-2911 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2023-2911 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

- [CVE-2015-3306](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2015-3306/): ProFTPD Improper Access Control (critical 10.0, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2025-49113](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-49113/): RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data (critical 9.9, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2026-24061](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-24061/): GNU InetUtils Argument Injection (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2025-39682](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2025-39682/): Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2024-9680](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2024-9680/): Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2023-2911 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2023-2911 is a high-severity denial of service vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 21 Jun 2023. 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-2023-2911 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Debian Debian Linux. 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-2023-2911/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-2911/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-2911
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-2911
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2023-2911

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2023-2911/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.