CVE-2018-16855

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 58.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2018-12-03 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-125

Description

An issue has been found in PowerDNS Recursor before version 4.1.8 where a remote attacker sending a DNS query can trigger an out-of-bounds memory read while computing the hash of the query for a packet cache lookup, possibly leading to a crash.

Affected products

PowerDNS Recursor: before 4.1.8 — fixed in 4.1.8

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: PowerDNS Recursor 4.1.8. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-16855
https://docs.powerdns.com/recursor/security-advisories/powerdns-advisory-2018-09.html
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-16855
https://docs.powerdns.com/recursor/security-advisories/powerdns-advisory-2018-09.html

Get alerted when CVE-2018-16855 or the next vulnerability affects your stack