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High

Security advisory

Type: advisorySources: OSVCVE: CVE-2020-17440

An issue was discovered in uIP 1.0, as used in Contiki 3.0 and other products. The code that parses incoming DNS packets does not validate that domain names present in the DNS responses have '\0' termination. This results in errors when calculating the offset of the pointer that jumps over domain name bytes in DNS response packets when a name lacks this termination, and eventually leads to dereferencing the pointer at an invalid/arbitrary address, within newdata() and parse_name() in resolv.c.

Products
Not specified
Affected versions
Not specified
Fixed versions
Not specified
CVEs
CVE-2020-17440
Confirmed fixed CVEs
Not specified
Updated in this feed
1 Nov 2026, 07:56 UTC · Revision 1

Source evidence

CVE-2020-17440

core-osv · Original source

Published 11 Dec 2020, 23:15 UTC

An issue was discovered in uIP 1.0, as used in Contiki 3.0 and other products. The code that parses incoming DNS packets does not validate that domain names present in the DNS responses have '\0' termination. This results in errors when calculating the offset of the pointer that jumps over domain name bytes in DNS response packets when a name lacks this termination, and eventually leads to dereferencing the pointer at an invalid/arbitrary address, within newdata() and parse_name() in resolv.c.

osv:CVE-2020-17440
Complete source record
{
  "id": "29f99f7b5cd7e378fd4146a72b344095cfc8125a17be34198085ca1e41d4c093",
  "url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2020-17440",
  "method": "structured",
  "payload": {
    "kind": "advisory",
    "title": "CVE-2020-17440",
    "summary": "An issue was discovered in uIP 1.0, as used in Contiki 3.0 and other products. The code that parses incoming DNS packets does not validate that domain names present in the DNS responses have '\\0' termination. This results in errors when calculating the offset of the pointer that jumps over domain name bytes in DNS response packets when a name lacks this termination, and eventually leads to dereferencing the pointer at an invalid/arbitrary address, within newdata() and parse_name() in resolv.c.",
    "evidence": "osv:CVE-2020-17440",
    "products": [],
    "severity": "high",
    "structured": {
      "id": "CVE-2020-17440",
      "aliases": [
        "CVE-2020-17440"
      ],
      "metrics": [
        {
          "type": "CVSS_V3",
          "score": "CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H"
        }
      ],
      "affected": [
        {
          "ranges": [
            {
              "repo": "https://github.com/adamdunkels/uip",
              "type": "GIT",
              "events": [
                {
                  "introduced": "a49def743f6e5c7d0c0f2d724f0b8e0c563a4a37"
                },
                {
                  "last_affected": "a49def743f6e5c7d0c0f2d724f0b8e0c563a4a37"
                }
              ],
              "database_specific": {
                "extracted_events": [
                  {
                    "cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:uip_project:uip:1.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*",
                    "range": [
                      {
                        "introduced": "1.0"
                      },
                      {
                        "last_affected": "1.0"
                      }
                    ],
                    "source": "CPE_STRING"
                  }
                ]
              }
            }
          ],
          "versions": [
            "1.0",
            "uip-1-0"
          ],
          "database_specific": {
            "source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2020-17440.json"
          }
        }
      ],
      "modified": "2026-10-24T10:31:00.700855284Z",
      "provider": "osv",
      "references": [
        "https://us-cert.cisa.gov/ics/advisories/icsa-20-343-01",
        "https://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/815128"
      ],
      "provider_metadata": {}
    },
    "related_cves": [
      {
        "value": "CVE-2020-17440",
        "evidence": "/id"
      }
    ],
    "security_relevant": true,
    "severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
  },
  "source_id": "core-osv",
  "document_id": 439612,
  "published_at": "2020-12-11T23:15:13.153+00:00"
}