MEDIUM SEVERITY

CVE-2018-5738

Bind vulnerability

CVSS
5.3
EPSS
11.1%
EPSS pct
95th
Exploited
No known
Change #4777 (introduced in October 2017) introduced an unforeseen issue in releases which were issued after that date, affecting which clients are permitted to make recursive queries to a BIND nameserver. The intended (and documented) behavior is that if an operator has not specified a value for the "allow-recursion" setting, it SHOULD default to one of the following: none, if "recursion no;" is set in named.conf; a value inherited from the "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" settings IF "recursion yes;" (the default for that setting) AND match lists are explicitly set for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" (see the BIND9 Administrative Reference Manual section 6.2 for more details); or the intended default of "allow-recursion {localhost; localnets;};" if "recursion yes;" is in effect and no values are explicitly set for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query". However, because of the regression introduced by change #4777, it is possible when "recursion yes;" is in effect and no match list values are provided for "allow-query-cache" or "allow-query" for the setting of "allow-recursion" to inherit a setting of all hosts from the "allow-query" setting default, improperly permitting recursion to all clients. Affects BIND 9.9.12, 9.10.7, 9.11.3, 9.12.0->9.12.1-P2, the development release 9.13.0, and also releases 9.9.12-S1, 9.10.7-S1, 9.11.3-S1, and 9.11.3-S2 from BIND 9 Supported Preview Edition.
Affected vendor
Isc
Affected product
Bind
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
Weakness type (CWE)
  • CWE-200 — Exposure of Sensitive Information
Published
2019-01-16

Risk analysis

Based on its CVSS vector, this vulnerability is exploitable over the network, low attack complexity, requiring no privileges, no user interaction. Successful exploitation leads to low impact to confidentiality.

Its EPSS score of 11.1% reflects a moderate probability of exploitation activity in the wild over the next 30 days, placing it above 95% of all scored CVEs.

Check your external exposure to CVE-2018-5738

  • Confirm whether Isc Bind is running on any internet-facing host or subdomain.
  • Match discovered service fingerprints against the version affected by CVE-2018-5738.
  • Prioritise remediation if the asset is public, business-critical, or near authentication/payment flows.

How ThreatPort helps with CVE-2018-5738

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