CVE-2025-8677
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Description
A vulnerability was found in BIND 9 resolvers, where processing malformed DNSKEY records from a specially crafted zone can lead to resource exhaustion, primarily causing excessive CPU utilization. This issue enables a remote, unauthenticated attacker to degrade resolver performance and potentially cause a denial of service (DoS) for legitimate DNS clients.
Statement
This vulnerability is considered Important because it allows a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause significant CPU exhaustion on vulnerable BIND resolvers by serving zones containing malformed DNSKEY records. The flaw triggers excessive computational effort during DNSKEY validation, leading to degraded performance and potential denial of service for legitimate clients. However, the issue affects availability only—it does not enable code execution, data exposure, or privilege escalation—so it is not classified as critical. Furthermore, authoritative servers are not impacted, limiting the scope of exposure to recursive resolvers. While the attack is easy to launch and can disrupt DNS operations, its effect ceases once the malicious traffic stops, making prompt patching and recursive access control effective mitigations.
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.
To reduce risk, restrict recursive queries to trusted or internal networks only, and apply rate limiting or firewall rules to prevent excessive or repetitive requests. Enabling DNSSEC validation helps reject forged records, while isolating recursive resolvers from authoritative servers limits the impact of potential cache poisoning. Active monitoring of CPU usage, query volume, and cache anomalies can provide early warning of abuse or attacks.
Additional Information
- This content is not included.Bugzilla 2405830: bind: Resource exhaustion via malformed DNSKEY handling
- Content from cwe.mitre.org is not included.CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption
- FAQ: Frequently asked questions about CVE-2025-8677
- Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.
External References
Content from www.cve.org is not included.https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2025-8677
Content from nvd.nist.gov is not included.https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-8677
Affected Packages and Issued Red Hat Security Errata
| Products / Services | Components | State | Errata |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Discovery 2 | discovery/discovery-ui-rhel9 | Fixed | RHSA-2025:21994 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | bind | Fixed | RHSA-2025:19912 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10 | bind | Fixed | RHSA-2025:21034 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | bind | Not affected | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | bind | Not affected | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | bind | Not affected | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | bind9.16 | Not affected | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | bind9.18 | Fixed | RHSA-2025:19950 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | bind9.18 | Fixed | RHSA-2025:21111 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | bind | Not affected | |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | dhcp | Not affected | |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.12 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:0316 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.13 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:0677 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.14 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:0996 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.15 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:1541 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.16 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:0326 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.17 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:0702 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.18 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:0332 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.19 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:0674 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.20 | rhcos | Fixed | RHSA-2026:0420 |
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 | |
| Attack Vector | Network | |
| Attack Complexity | Low | |
| Privileges Required | None | |
| User Interaction | None | |
| Scope | Unchanged | |
| Confidentiality Impact | None | |
| Integrity Impact | None | |
| Availability Impact | 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
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is Red Hat's CVSS v3 score or Impact different from other vendors?
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"?
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"?
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?
I have a Red Hat product but it is not in the above list, is it affected?
Why is my security scanner reporting my product as vulnerable to this vulnerability even though my product version is fixed or not affected?
My product is listed as "Out of Support Scope". What does this mean?
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