CVE-2026-69184 PUBLISHED

c-ares: CPU-exhaustion denial of service via unbounded DNS name compression pointer chains

Assigner: GitHub_M
Reserved: 03.08.2026 Published: 18.09.2026 Updated: 18.09.2026

c-ares is an asynchronous resolver library. Prior to 1.34.7, ares_dns_name_parse() enforces backward DNS compression pointers but does not bound the total pointer hops or assembled name length. A malicious DNS server can send a response containing a long descending pointer chain and many resource records whose NAME or RDATA fields refer to the chain, causing repeated decompression work that grows quadratically with message size. A single crafted response can stall the single-threaded c-ares event loop and deny DNS resolution, without causing memory corruption or information disclosure. This issue is fixed in version 1.34.7.

Metrics

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS Score: 7.5

Product Status

Vendor c-ares
Product c-ares
Versions
  • Version < 1.34.7 is affected

References

Problem Types

  • CWE-407: Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity CWE