What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-7068

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 7.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2018-09-11 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-20

Description

An issue has been found in PowerDNS before 3.4.11 and 4.0.2, and PowerDNS recursor before 3.7.4 and 4.0.4, allowing a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause an abnormal CPU usage load on the PowerDNS server by sending crafted DNS queries, which might result in a partial denial of service if the system becomes overloaded. This issue is based on the fact that the PowerDNS server parses all records present in a query regardless of whether they are needed or even legitimate. A specially crafted query containing a large number of records can be used to take advantage of that behaviour.

Affected products

• Debian Linux: 8.0
• PowerDNS Authoritative: before 3.4.11; from 4.0.0 before 4.0.2 — fixed in 3.4.11, 4.0.2
• PowerDNS Recursor: before 3.7.4; from 4.0.0 before 4.0.4 — fixed in 3.7.4, 4.0.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: PowerDNS Authoritative 3.4.11, 4.0.2; PowerDNS Recursor 3.7.4, 4.0.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2016-7068
• https://doc.powerdns.com/md/security/powerdns-advisory-2016-02/
• https://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3763
• https://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3764
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2016-7068
• https://doc.powerdns.com/md/security/powerdns-advisory-2016-02/
• https://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3763
• https://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3764

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