What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2023-3341: A stack exhaustion flaw in control channel code may cause named to terminate unexpectedly
- Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 3.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: none known
- Published: 2023-09-20 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-787
Description
The code that processes control channel messages sent to `named` calls certain functions recursively during packet parsing. Recursion depth is only limited by the maximum accepted packet size; depending on the environment, this may cause the packet-parsing code to run out of available stack memory, causing `named` to terminate unexpectedly. Since each incoming control channel message is fully parsed before its contents are authenticated, exploiting this flaw does not require the attacker to hold a valid RNDC key; only network access to the control channel's configured TCP port is necessary. This issue affects BIND 9 versions 9.2.0 through 9.16.43, 9.18.0 through 9.18.18, 9.19.0 through 9.19.16, 9.9.3-S1 through 9.16.43-S1, and 9.18.0-S1 through 9.18.18-S1.
Affected products
- Debian Linux: 10.0, 11.0
- Fedoraproject Fedora: 37, 38
- ISC BIND: from 9.2.0 before 9.16.44; from 9.18.0 before 9.18.19; from 9.19.0 before 9.19.17; 9.9.3-s1, 9.9.12-s1, 9.9.13-s1, 9.10.5-s1, 9.10.7-s1, 9.11.3-s1 (+25) — fixed in 9.16.44, 9.18.19, 9.19.17
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: ISC BIND 9.16.44, 9.18.19, 9.19.17. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/09/20/2
- https://kb.isc.org/docs/cve-2023-3341
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/01/msg00021.html
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/IPJLLTJCSDJJII7IIZPLTBQNWP7MZH7F/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/U35OARLQCPMVCBBPHWBXY5M6XJLD2TZ5/
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VSK5V4W4OHPM3JTJGWAQD6CZW7SFD75B/
- https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20231013-0003/
- https://www.debian.org/security/2023/dsa-5504
- http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/09/20/2
- https://kb.isc.org/docs/cve-2023-3341
- https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2024/01/msg00021.html
- https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce@lists.fedoraproject.org/message/IPJLLTJCSDJJII7IIZPLTBQNWP7MZH7F/
Get alerted when CVE-2023-3341 or the next vulnerability affects your stack