Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2016-2120 json

An issue has been found in PowerDNS Authoritative Server versions up to and including 3.4.10, 4.0.1 allowing an authorized user to crash th…

published 2018-11-01 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-3223

cvss
7.5
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
2.0%
EPSS 2.0% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 80%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue has been found in PowerDNS Authoritative Server versions up to and including 3.4.10, 4.0.1 allowing an authorized user to crash the server by inserting a specially crafted record in a zone under their control then sending a DNS query for that record. The issue is due to an integer overflow when checking if the content of the record matches the expected size, allowing an attacker to cause a read past the buffer boundary.

Patch / fix

  • pdns Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.0.2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-2120

  • pdns openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.5.1-1.5
  • pdns-recursor openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.5.5-1.3

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11156-1openSUSE-SU-2024:11157-1

  • pdns Alpine 3.5 4.0.3-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2016-2120

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • powerdns Arch Linux 4.0.2-1

arch linux advisories AVG-147

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2016-2120 updated cvss 7.5

pdns: crafted zone record can cause a denial of service

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

2.00% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 80% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 3.0 6.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:S/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected products

  • [UNKNOWN] pdns

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-190 Integer Overflow or Wraparound

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.