High
Security advisory
An issue has been found in the parsing of authoritative answers in PowerDNS Recursor before 4.0.8, leading to a NULL pointer dereference when parsing a specially crafted answer containing a CNAME of a different class than IN. An unauthenticated remote attacker could cause a denial of service.
- Products
- Not specified
- Affected versions
- Not specified
- Fixed versions
- Not specified
- CVEs
- CVE-2017-15120
- Confirmed fixed CVEs
- Not specified
- Updated in this feed
- 1 Nov 2026, 04:37 UTC · Revision 1
Source evidence
An issue has been found in the parsing of authoritative answers in PowerDNS Recursor before 4.0.8, leading to a NULL pointer dereference when parsing a specially crafted answer containing a CNAME of a different class than IN. An unauthenticated remote attacker could cause a denial of service.
osv:CVE-2017-15120
Complete source record
{
"id": "c91d879abe4a54b02878fd0c4cc9c71afb583b2d63bc2d2e32e621bcb7907a05",
"url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2017-15120",
"method": "structured",
"payload": {
"kind": "advisory",
"title": "CVE-2017-15120",
"summary": "An issue has been found in the parsing of authoritative answers in PowerDNS Recursor before 4.0.8, leading to a NULL pointer dereference when parsing a specially crafted answer containing a CNAME of a different class than IN. An unauthenticated remote attacker could cause a denial of service.",
"evidence": "osv:CVE-2017-15120",
"products": [],
"severity": "high",
"structured": {
"id": "CVE-2017-15120",
"aliases": [
"CVE-2017-15120"
],
"metrics": [
{
"type": "CVSS_V3",
"score": "CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H"
}
],
"affected": [
{
"ranges": [
{
"repo": "https://github.com/powerdns/pdns",
"type": "GIT",
"events": [
{
"introduced": "0"
},
{
"fixed": "fdd1fca63fc4949984b501ed1bca8fa01a23fc61"
}
],
"database_specific": {
"extracted_events": [
{
"cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:powerdns:recursor:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*",
"range": [
{
"introduced": "0"
},
{
"fixed": "4.0.8"
}
],
"source": "CPE_RANGE"
}
]
}
}
],
"versions": [
"rec-4.0.7",
"rec-4.0.6",
"rec-4.0.5",
"rec-4.0.5-rc2",
"rec-4.0.5-rc1",
"rec-4.0.4",
"rec-4.0.3",
"dnsdist-1.1.0-beta1",
"rec-4.0.2",
"rec-4.0.1",
"auth-4.0.1",
"rec-4.0.0",
"auth-4.0.0",
"auth-4.0.0-rc1",
"auth-4.0.0-rc2",
"rec-4.0.0-rc1",
"rec-4.0.0-beta1",
"auth-4.0.0-beta1",
"auth-4.0.0-alpha3",
"rec-4.0.0-alpha3",
"dnsdist-1.0.0",
"dnsdist-1.0.0-beta1",
"rec-4.0.0-alpha2",
"auth-4.0.0-alpha2",
"dnsdist-1.0.0-alpha2",
"auth-4.0.0-alpha1",
"rec-4.0.0-alpha1",
"dnsdist-1.0.0-alpha1",
"auth-3.4.0",
"auth-3.4.0-rc2",
"rec-3.6.0",
"auth-3.4.0-rc1",
"rec-3.5",
"rec-3.5-rc5",
"rec-3.5-rc4",
"rec-3.5-rc3",
"rec-3.5-rc1",
"auth-3.2-rc4",
"auth-3.2-rc3",
"auth-3.2-rc2",
"auth-3.2-rc1",
"auth-3.1-rc3",
"auth-3.1-rc2",
"auth-3.1-rc1",
"rec-3.3.1",
"rec-3.1.4",
"rec-3.0.1",
"rec-3-0-1",
"rec-3.0",
"rec-3-0"
],
"database_specific": {
"source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2017-15120.json"
}
}
],
"modified": "2026-10-24T10:30:21.008383020Z",
"provider": "osv",
"references": [
"https://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-4063",
"https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2017-15120",
"https://doc.powerdns.com/recursor/security-advisories/powerdns-advisory-2017-08.html"
],
"provider_metadata": {
"unresolved_ranges": [
{
"cpes": [
"cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:8.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*",
"cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:9.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*"
],
"vendor_product": "debian:debian_linux",
"extracted_events": [
{
"range": [
{
"introduced": "8.0"
},
{
"last_affected": "8.0"
},
{
"introduced": "9.0"
},
{
"last_affected": "9.0"
}
],
"source": "CPE_STRING"
}
]
}
]
}
},
"related_cves": [
{
"value": "CVE-2017-15120",
"evidence": "/id"
}
],
"security_relevant": true,
"severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
},
"source_id": "core-osv",
"document_id": 430402,
"published_at": "2018-07-27T15:29:00.343+00:00"
}