What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-62994: CoreDNS `k8s_external` headless AXFR can emit an empty transfer batch that panics the `transfer` plugin

• Severity: low (CVSS 3.7 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2026-07-16 · updated 2026-07-22
• Weakness: CWE-248

Description

CoreDNS is a DNS server written in Go. From 1.9.4 until 1.14.5, a network DNS client allowed to request AXFR for a CoreDNS zone can trigger a panic when CoreDNS is configured with k8s_external headless-service zone transfers and Kubernetes contains a headless service endpoint with no declared ports; plugin/kubernetes/object/endpoint.go creates Port: -1, plugin/k8s_external/msg_to_dns.go skips that service, plugin/k8s_external/transfer.go sends an empty []dns.RR batch, and plugin/transfer/transfer.go indexes records[0] without checking the batch is non-empty. This issue is fixed in version 1.14.5.

Affected products

• coredns: from 1.9.4 before 1.14.5 — fixed in 1.14.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: coredns 1.14.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/coredns/coredns/commit/ab318db7b4a3a19273852ed627f54888198c8efb
• https://github.com/coredns/coredns/pull/8207
• https://github.com/coredns/coredns/releases/tag/v1.14.5
• https://github.com/coredns/coredns/security/advisories/GHSA-74w3-63xv-x9mv
• https://github.com/coredns/coredns/security/advisories/GHSA-74w3-63xv-x9mv

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