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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2018-14644 json

An issue has been found in PowerDNS Recursor from 4.0.0 up to and including 4.1.4.

published 2018-11-09 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-6542

cvss
5.3
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
4.8%
EPSS 4.8% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 92%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue has been found in PowerDNS Recursor from 4.0.0 up to and including 4.1.4. A remote attacker sending a DNS query for a meta-type like OPT can lead to a zone being wrongly cached as failing DNSSEC validation. It only arises if the parent zone is signed, and all the authoritative servers for that parent zone answer with FORMERR to a query for at least one of the meta-types. As a result, subsequent queries from clients requesting DNSSEC validation will be answered with a ServFail.

Patch / fix

  • pdns-recursor Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.1.7-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-14644

  • pdns-recursor Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 4.0.0~alpha2-2ubuntu0.1+esm1
  • pdns-recursor Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 4.1.1-2ubuntu0.1~esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-14644

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • pdns-recursor openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.5.5-1.3
  • pdns-recursor Package Hub 15 4.1.2-bp150.2.3.1
  • pdns-recursor Package Hub 12 SP1 4.1.8-13.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11157-1openSUSE-SU-2018:4177-1openSUSE-SU-2018:4062-1

  • pdns-recursor Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +13 more 4.1.7-r0
  • pdns-recursor Alpine 3.7, Alpine 3.6, Alpine 3.5 4.0.9-r0
  • pdns-recursor Alpine 3.8 4.1.8-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2018-14644

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • powerdns-recursor Arch Linux 4.1.5-1

arch linux advisories AVG-805

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2018-14644 updated cvss 5.3

pdns: crafted query for meta-types can lead to a DoS

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

4.84% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 92% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 5.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
NVD 3.0 5.9 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected products

  • [UNKNOWN] pdns

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.