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Fencer Intel
medium 5.3

CVE-2016-7072 json

An issue has been found in PowerDNS Authoritative Server before 3.4.11 and 4.0.2 allowing a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause a den…

published 2018-09-10 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2016-7952

cvss
5.3
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
6.2%
EPSS 6.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 93%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

An issue has been found in PowerDNS Authoritative Server before 3.4.11 and 4.0.2 allowing a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial of service by opening a large number of TCP connections to the web server. If the web server runs out of file descriptors, it triggers an exception and terminates the whole PowerDNS process. While it's more complicated for an unauthorized attacker to make the web server run out of file descriptors since its connection will be closed just after being accepted, it might still be possible.

Patch / fix

  • powerdns authoritative 3.4.11, 4.0.2
  • pdns Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.0.2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2016-7072

  • pdns openSUSE Tumbleweed 4.5.1-1.5

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:11156-1

  • pdns Alpine 3.5 4.0.3-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2016-7072

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-2016-7072 updated cvss 5.3

pdns: Denial of service via the web server

  • 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

6.15% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 93% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 5.3 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
NVD 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected products

  • Open-Xchange pdns

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation
  • CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

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.