Information disclosure in Isc Bind

CVE-2018-5738

Change #4777 (introduced in October 2017) introduced an unforeseen issue in releases which were issued after that date, affecting which clients are permitted to make recursive queries to a BIND nameserver. The intended (and documented) behavior is that if an operator has not specified a value for the "allow-recursion" setting, it SHOULD default to one of the following: none, if "recursion no;" is set in named.conf; a value inherited from the "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" settings IF "recursion yes;" (the default for that setting) AND match lists are explicitly set for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" (see the BIND9 Administrative Reference Manual section 6.2 for more details); or the intended default of "allow-recursion {localhost; localnets;};" if "recursion yes;" is in effect and no values are explicitly set for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query". However, because of the regression introduced by change #4777, it is possible when "recursion yes;" is in effect and no match list values are provided for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" for the setting of "allow-recursion" to inherit a setting of all hosts from the "allow-query" setting default, improperly permitting recursion to all clients. Affects BIND 9.9.12, 9.10.7, 9.11.3, 9.12.0->9.12.1-P2, the development release 9.13.0, and also releases 9.9.12-S1, 9.10.7-S1, 9.11.3-S1, and 9.11.3-S2 from BIND 9 Supported Preview Edition.

Vulnerability class: Information Disclosure

EPSS: 0.112 (95.5th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 5.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N.

Affected products

  • Isc Bind — versions 9.9.12, 9.10.7, 9.11.3
  • Isc Bind 9 — versions 9.9.12, 9.10.7, 9.11.3, 9.12.0->9.12.1-P2, the development release 9.13.0, and also releases 9.9.12-S1, 9.10.7-S1, 9.11.3-S1, and 9.11.3-S2 from BIND 9 Supported Preview Edition.
  • Canonical Ubuntu_linux — versions 18.04

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2018-5738?
CVE-2018-5738 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Isc Bind, classified under Information Disclosure. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2019-01-16.
How severe is CVE-2018-5738?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.
Is CVE-2018-5738 known to be exploited?
8 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.