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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.3

CVE-2018-5738 json

Some versions of BIND can improperly permit recursive query service to unauthorized clients

published 2019-01-16 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-17507

cvss
5.3
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
11.4%
EPSS 11.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 96%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Change #4777 (introduced in October 2017) introduced an unforeseen issue in releases which were issued after that date, affecting which clients are permitted to make recursive queries to a BIND nameserver. The intended (and documented) behavior is that if an operator has not specified a value for the "allow-recursion" setting, it SHOULD default to one of the following: none, if "recursion no;" is set in named.conf; a value inherited from the "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" settings IF "recursion yes;" (the default for that setting) AND match lists are explicitly set for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" (see the BIND9 Administrative Reference Manual section 6.2 for more details); or the intended default of "allow-recursion {localhost; localnets;};" if "recursion yes;" is in effect and no values are explicitly set for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query". However, because of the regression introduced by change #4777, it is possible when "recursion yes;" is in effect and no match list values are provided for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" for the setting of "allow-recursion" to inherit a setting of all hosts from the "allow-query" setting default, improperly permitting recursion to all clients. Affects BIND 9.9.12, 9.10.7, 9.11.3, 9.12.0->9.12.1-P2, the development release 9.13.0, and also releases 9.9.12-S1, 9.10.7-S1, 9.11.3-S1, and 9.11.3-S2 from BIND 9 Supported Preview Edition.

Patch / fix

  • bind9 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1:9.11.3+dfsg-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2018-5738

  • bind9 Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 1:9.11.3+dfsg-1ubuntu1.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2018-5738

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

  • bind Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +13 more 9.12.2_p1-r0
  • bind Alpine 3.7, Alpine 3.6 9.11.5_p4-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2018-5738

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

  • bind Arch Linux 9.13.2-1

arch linux advisories AVG-718

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-2018-5738 updated cvss 5.3

bind: Improper handling of configuration allows all clients to perform recursive queries

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 bind, bind97 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 bind, bind-sdb, bind-libs, bind-utils, bind-chroot Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 bind, bind-sdb, bind-libs, bind-utils, bind-chroot, bind-pkcs11, +6 more Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 bind, bind-sdb, bind-libs, bind-utils, bind-chroot, bind-pkcs11, +7 more
    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

11.37% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 96% 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:L/I:N/A:N
NVD 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Affected products

  • ISC BIND 9

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-200 Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

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.