CVE-2013-3919: A recursive resolver can be crashed by a query for a malformed zone

A defect exists which allows an attacker to crash a BIND 9 recursive resolver with a RUNTIME_CHECK error in resolver.c

CVE: CVE-2013-3919

Document version: 1.1

Posting date: 04 Jun 2013

Program impacted: BIND 9

Versions affected: BIND 9.6-ESV-R9, 9.8.5, and 9.9.3 are affected. Versions 9.6.0 through 9.6-ESV-R8, 9.8.0 through 9.8.4-P2, and 9.9.0 through 9.9.2-P2 ARE NOT affected.

Other major branches of BIND (e.g. 9.7, 9.5, etc) are not vulnerable but they are no longer supported by ISC and may lack other important security fixes.

Severity: High

Exploitable: Remotely

Description:

A bug has been discovered in the most recent releases of BIND 9 which has the potential for deliberate exploitation as a denial-of-service attack. By sending a recursive resolver a query for a record in a specially malformed zone, an attacker can cause BIND 9 to exit with a fatal "RUNTIME_CHECK" error in resolver.c.

Impact:

Triggering this defect will cause the affected server to exit with an error, denying service to recursive DNS clients that use that particular server.

CVSS Score: 7.8

CVSS Equation: (AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C)

For more information on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System and to obtain your specific environmental score please visit: http://nvd.nist.gov/cvss.cfm?calculator&adv&version=2&vector=%28AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C%29.

Workarounds: None.

Active exploits:

At the time of this advisory, no intentional exploitation of this bug has been observed in the wild. However, the existence of the issue has been disclosed on an open mailing list with enough accompanying detail to reverse-engineer an attack and ISC is therefore treating this as a Type II (publicly disclosed) vulnerability, in accordance with our Phased Disclosure Process.

Solution:

New versions of BIND are being provided which contain a fix for the defect. The recommended solution is to upgrade to the patched release most closely related to your current version of BIND. These can all be downloaded from https://www.isc.org/downloads/bind.

• BIND 9 version 9.9.3-P1
• BIND 9 version 9.8.5-P1
• BIND 9 version 9.6-ESV-R9-P1

Acknowledgements:

Document Revision History:

1.0 Type II Public Disclosure, 04 June 2013
1.1 Published FAQ and Supplemental Information, 13 June 2013

Related Documents:

If you'd like more information on ISC Subscription Support and Advance Security Notifications, please visit https://www.isc.org/support/.

See our BIND 9 Security Vulnerability Matrix for a complete listing of security vulnerabilities and versions affected.

Do you still have questions? Questions regarding this advisory should go to security-officer@isc.org. To report a new issue, please encrypt your message using security-officer@isc.org's PGP key which can be found here: https://www.isc.org/downloads/software-support-policy/openpgp-key/. If you are unable to use encrypted email, you may also report new issues at: https://www.isc.org/community/report-bug/.

Note: ISC patches only currently supported versions. When possible, we indicate EOL versions affected. (For current information on which versions are actively supported, please see https://www.isc.org/downloads/.)

ISC Security Vulnerability Disclosure Policy: Details of our current security advisory policy and practice can be found in the ISC Software Defect and Security Vulnerability Disclosure Policy.

This Knowledgebase article is the complete and official security advisory document.

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