pdnsd: Denial of Service and cache poisoning

Background

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

Description

Two issues have been reported in pdnsd:

• The p_exec_query() function in src/dns_query.c does not properly handle many entries in the answer section of a DNS reply, related to a “dangling pointer bug” (CVE-2008-4194).
• The default value for query_port_start was set to 0, disabling UDP source port randomization for outgoing queries (CVE-2008-1447).

Impact

An attacker could exploit the second weakness to poison the cache of pdnsd and thus spoof DNS traffic, which could e.g. lead to the redirection of web or mail traffic to malicious sites. The first issue can be exploited by enticing pdnsd to send a query to a malicious DNS server, or using the port randomization weakness, and might lead to a Denial of Service.

Workaround

Port randomization can be enabled by setting the “query_port_start” option to 1024 which would resolve the CVE-2008-1447 issue.

Resolution

All pdnsd users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-dns/pdnsd-1.2.7"