CVE-2025-25188 DNSSEC validation may accept broken authentication chains
Attackers can bypass DNSSEC validation in Hickory DNS by exploiting trust anchor handling, allowing spoofed DNS responses to be accepted as authentic.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2025-25188?
CVE-2025-25188 is a medium-severity vulnerability in hickory-dns, published on 10 Feb 2025. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Hickory DNS is a Rust based DNS client, server, and resolver. A vulnerability present starting in version 0.8.0 and prior to versions 0.24.3 and 0.25.0-alpha.5 impacts Hickory DNS users relying on DNSSEC verification in the client library, stub resolver, or recursive resolver. The DNSSEC validation routines treat entire RRsets of DNSKEY records as trusted once they have established trust in only one of the DNSKEYs. As a result, if a zone includes a DNSKEY with a public key that matches a configured trust anchor, all keys in that zone will be trusted to authenticate other records in the zone. There is a second variant of this vulnerability involving DS records, where an authenticated DS record covering one DNSKEY leads to trust in signatures made by an unrelated DNSKEY in the same zone. Versions 0.24.3 and 0.25.0-alpha.5 fix the issue.
Weakness: CWE-345
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-25188?
2 open source packages ship an affected version, including hickory-proto.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
hickory-proto crates.io | From 0.8.0 | 0.24.3 |
hickory-proto crates.io | From 0.8.0 | 0.24.3 |
How do I fix CVE-2025-25188?
Upgrade hickory-proto to 0.24.3 or later.
Is CVE-2025-25188 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2025-25188 exists.
Sources
Also known as CLEANSTART-2025-IN27647, DEBIAN-CVE-2025-25188, GHSA-37wc-h8xc-5hc4, UBUNTU-CVE-2025-25188.