Operational Notification: RPZ crashes (BIND 9.10)
  • 29 Oct 2018
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Operational Notification: RPZ crashes (BIND 9.10)

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Article Summary

Summary

Numerous defects have been found in the BIND 9.10 implementation of Response Policy Zones (RPZ) which can lead to a crash of the named process.

Posting date: 10 Jun 2015

Program impactedBIND

Versions affected: 9.10.0 through 9.10.2 (inclusive)

The defect also affects the BIND 9 Subscription Edition, which is only available to ISC BIND Support customers; versions 9.9.3-S1 through 9.9.7-S1 (inclusive) are affected.

Description

ISC has received multiple reports of named crashes related to handling of Response Policy Zones (RPZ) in BIND 9.10, including (but not limited to) reports from operators who are using the Spamhaus RPZ feed.

Our developers have analyzed the reported crashes (which are in the form of assertion failures, i.e., a controlled shutdown), and they have identified multiple defects in the handling of Response Policy Zones which are addressed by new patches. These patches are being made available in coordination with this notification.

The most commonly-encountered crash happens when all of the following occur on a server with one or more slave RPZs:

  1. A slave RPZ zone transfer (IXFR) is initiated; and

  2. The transfer fails for any reason, and named falls back to AXFR.

Impact:

Only servers with RPZs are affected, most critically those with one or more slave RPZs.

Workarounds: The only safe workaround would be to convert all "type slave" RPZs to "type master", and then to retrieve zone updates out-of-band. This would avoid the more likely crashes, but the problems in the RPZ code would still exist, and could be manifested in unanticipated ways.

Solution

Upgrade to the latest release of BIND appropriate for your environment.

Acknowledgements: ISC would like to thank the several reporters for reporting this issue; with special mention of our friends at the Spamhaus Project for their kind assistance in troubleshooting.

Do you still have questions? Questions regarding this advisory should go to security-officer@isc.orgTo 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 here: ISC Software Defect and Security Vulnerability Disclosure Policy.

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

Legal Disclaimer:

Internet Systems Consortium (ISC) is providing this notice on an "AS IS" basis. No warranty or guarantee of any kind is expressed in this notice and none should be implied. ISC expressly excludes and disclaims any warranties regarding this notice or materials referred to in this notice, including, without limitation, any implied warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, absence of hidden defects, or of non-infringement. Your use or reliance on this notice or materials referred to in this notice is at your own risk. ISC may change this notice at any time. A stand-alone copy or paraphrase of the text of this document that omits the document URL is an uncontrolled copy. Uncontrolled copies may lack important information, be out of date, or contain factual errors.