Public vulnerability disclosure

CVE-2026-123606

Hickory-DNS Recursor 0.25.0-alpha.3 through 0.25.2 Glueless-NS Referral Amplification

publishedCWE-400

The hickory-dns recursor in hickory-recursor 0.25.0-alpha.3 through 0.25.2 and hickory-resolver 0.26.0-alpha.1 before 0.26.2 iterates every out-of-bailiwick NS target lacking glue in a referral without any per-query work budget. Remote attackers can serve such referrals to force A and AAAA lookups per target, amplifying traffic against remote servers or exhausting recursor resources.

Technical severity8.7 highCVSS 4.0 · CNA: VulnCheck
Published2026-11-08Source updated 2026-11-08
Collected2026-11-081 attributed source

Fixes and workarounds

No remediation reported in collected sources.

Missing remediation information is not evidence that no patch exists.

Affected products and versions

Affected products, source version ranges and reporting authorities
ProductVersionsAuthority
hickory-dns
hickory-dns
hickory-recursor
cargo
≥ 0.25.0-alpha.3; ≤ 0.25.2 (affected, semver)
Other versions: unaffected
CNA: VulnCheck
hickory-dns
hickory-dns
hickory-resolver
cargo
≥ 0.26.0-alpha.1; < 0.26.2 (affected, semver)
0.26.2 (unaffected, semver)
Other versions: unaffected
CNA: VulnCheck

Version ranges are source assertions. Check the vendor advisory and your installed configuration before determining exposure.

CVSS assessments

CVSS scores, vectors and reporting authorities
Version / scoreVectorAuthority
4.0 / 8.7
high
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:NCNA: VulnCheck
3.1 / 7.5
high
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCNA: VulnCheck

Exploit evidence

No exploit evidence in collected sources. This is not proof of no exploitation.

References

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