CVE-2020-25684

A flaw was found in dnsmasq. When getting a reply from a forwarded query, dnsmasq checks in the forward.c:reply_query() if the reply destination address/port is used by the pending forwarded queries. However, it does not use the address/port to retrieve the exact forwarded query, substantially reducing the number of attempts an attacker on the network would have to perform to forge a reply and get it accepted by dnsmasq. This issue contrasts with RFC5452, which specifies a query’s attributes that all must be used to match a reply. This flaw allows an attacker to perform a DNS Cache Poisoning attack. If chained with CVE-2020-25685 or CVE-2020-25686, the attack complexity of a successful attack is reduced. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data integrity.

Mitigation

The impact of this flaw can be reduced by disabling the dnsmasq cache by adding --cache-size=0 when calling dnsmasq or by adding a line with cache-size=0 to the dnsmasq configuration file (/etc/dnsmasq.conf by default).

When using Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.3 with libvirt through a virt:rhel module, use virsh net-edit <network-name> and reference <https://libvirt.org/formatnetwork.html#elementsNamespaces&gt; to add the suggested option cache-size=0.

There is no way to customize the dnsmasq configuration generated by libvirt, when using versions of Red Hat Enterprise Linux prior to version 8.3. If dnsmasq is being run through NetworkManager, create a new file in /etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d/ and add cache-size=0 to it.

In all cases, by disabling the cache, you may experience a performance loss in your environment due to all DNS queries being forwarded to the upstream servers. Please evaluate if the mitigation is appropriate for the system’s environment before applying.