pdnsd: Denial of Service and potential arbitrary code execution

Background

pdnsd is a proxy DNS server with permanent caching that is designed to cope with unreachable DNS servers.

Description

The pdnsd team has discovered an unspecified buffer overflow vulnerability. The PROTOS DNS Test Suite, by the Oulu University Secure Programming Group (OUSPG), has also revealed a memory leak error within the handling of the QTYPE and QCLASS DNS queries, leading to consumption of large amounts of memory.

Impact

An attacker can craft malicious DNS queries leading to a Denial of Service, and potentially the execution of arbitrary code.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All pdnsd users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-dns/pdnsd-1.2.4-r1"