CVE-2023-50868

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Last Modified: UTC

Important Important Impact What does this mean?
7.5 CVSS v3 Base Score

Description

A flaw was found in bind9. By flooding a DNSSEC resolver with responses coming from a DNSEC-signed zone using NSEC3, an attacker can lead the targeted resolver to a CPU exhaustion, further leading to a Denial of Service on the targeted host.

This vulnerability applies only for systems where DNSSEC validation is enabled.

Statement

The vulnerability in BIND9 that leads to CPU exhaustion through a flood of DNSSEC responses with NSEC3 signatures is a important severity issue due to its potential to induce a Denial of Service (DoS) condition on affected resolvers. By exploiting this flaw, an attacker can overwhelm a DNSSEC-enabled resolver with computationally intensive tasks, depleting CPU resources and disrupting normal DNS operations. This can result in significant service outages, affecting the resolver's ability to process legitimate DNS queries and thereby compromising network availability and reliability. The impact is exacerbated in high-traffic environments or where DNSSEC validation is extensively employed, making prompt remediation essential to prevent operational disruptions and maintain DNS infrastructure integrity.

Mitigation

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.

Additional Information

External References

Content from www.cve.org is not included.https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2023-50868

Content from nvd.nist.gov is not included.https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-50868

Content from blog.powerdns.com is not included.https://blog.powerdns.com/2024/02/13/powerdns-recursor-4-8-6-4-9-3-5-0-2-released

Content from kb.isc.org is not included.https://kb.isc.org/docs/cve-2023-50868

Content from www.knot-resolver.cz is not included.https://www.knot-resolver.cz/2024-02-13-knot-resolver-5.7.1.html

Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata

Products / Services Components State Errata
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 bind Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Extended Lifecycle Support - EXTENSION bind Fixed RHSA-2025:0039
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Extended Lifecycle Support - EXTENSION bind-dyndb-ldap Fixed RHSA-2025:0039
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 bind Fixed RHSA-2024:3741
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 bind-dyndb-ldap Fixed RHSA-2024:3741
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 dhcp Fixed RHSA-2024:3741
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 dnsmasq Not affected
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support unbound Fixed RHSA-2024:11003
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 unbound Fixed RHSA-2024:0965
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 dnsmasq Fixed RHSA-2024:1335
Unless explicitly stated as not affected, all previous versions of packages in any minor update stream of a product listed here should be assumed vulnerable, although may not have been subject to full analysis.

Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) Score Details

Important note

CVSS scores for open source components depend on vendor-specific factors (e.g. version or build chain). Therefore, Red Hat's score and impact rating can be different from NVD and other vendors. Red Hat remains the authoritative CVE Naming Authorities (CNA) source for its products and services (see Red Hat classifications ).

CVSS v3 Score Breakdown Red Hat NVD
CVSS v3 Base Score 7.5 7.5
Attack Vector Network Network
Attack Complexity Low Low
Privileges Required None None
User Interaction None None
Scope Unchanged Unchanged
Confidentiality Impact None None
Integrity Impact None None
Availability Impact High High

CVSS v3 Vector

Red Hat CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

NVD CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?

 For open source software shipped by multiple vendors, the CVSS base scores may vary for each vendor's version depending on the version they ship, how they ship it, the platform, and even how the software is compiled. This makes scoring of vulnerabilities difficult for third-party vulnerability databases such as NVD that only provide a single CVSS base score for each vulnerability. Red Hat scores reflect how a vulnerability affects our products specifically.

For more information, see https://access.redhat.com/solutions/762393.

My product is listed as "Under investigation" or "Affected", when will Red Hat release a fix for this vulnerability?
  • "Under investigation" doesn't necessarily mean that the product is affected by this vulnerability. It only means that our Analysis Team is still working on determining whether the product is affected and how it is affected.
  • "Affected" means that our Analysis Team has determined that this product is affected by this vulnerability and might release a fix to address this in the near future.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Will not fix"?

 A "will not fix" status means that a fix for an affected product version is not planned or not possible due to complexity, which may create additional risk.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Upgrade to a supported product version that includes a fix for this vulnerability (recommended).
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.

What can I do if my product is listed as "Fix deferred"?

 A deferred status means that a fix for an affected product version is not guaranteed due to higher-priority development work.

Available options depend mostly on the Impact of the vulnerability and the current Life Cycle phase of your product. Overall, you have the following options:
  • Apply a mitigation (if one exists).
  • Open a This content is not included.support case to request a prioritization of releasing a fix for this vulnerability.
  • Red Hat Engineering focuses on addressing high-priority issues based on their complexity or limited lifecycle support. Therefore, lower-priority issues will not receive immediate fixes.

What is a mitigation?

 A mitigation is an action that can be taken to reduce the impact of a security vulnerability, without deploying any fixes.

I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?

 The listed products were found to include one or more of the components that this vulnerability affects. These products underwent a thorough evaluation to determine their affectedness by this vulnerability. Note that layered products (such as container-based offerings) that consume affected components from any of the products listed in this table may be affected and are not represented.

Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?

 In order to maintain code stability and compatibility, Red Hat usually does not rebase packages to entirely new versions. Instead, we backport fixes and new features to an older version of the package we distribute. This can result in some security scanners that only consider the package version to report the package as vulnerable. To avoid this, we suggest that you use an approved vulnerability scanner from our This content is not included.Red Hat Vulnerability Scanner Certification program.