Know every vulnerabilitybefore it knows you.
DevGuard continuously monitors your dependencies and alerts you when CVEs like this one affect your stack — with real-time threat intelligence built for developers.
GHSA-h8mm-c463-wjq3
No affected components available
Summary
CoreDNS' transfer plugin can select the wrong ACL stanza when both a parent zone and a more-specific subzone are configured. A permissive parent-zone transfer rule can override a restrictive subzone rule (name-dependent), allowing an unauthorized client to perform AXFR/IXFR for the subzone and retrieve its zone contents.
Details
In plugin/transfer/transfer.go, stanza selection is implemented by longestMatch(), which is documented as "longest zone match wins", but it actually chooses the winner via a lexicographic string comparison:
- zone := "" // longest zone match wins (plugin/transfer/transfer.go)
- if z > zone { zone = z; x = xfr } (plugin/transfer/transfer.go)
So, a parent zone like example.org. can beat a child zone like a.example.org. purely due to lexicographic ordering ("example.org." > "a.example.org."), even though the child zone is the longer/more specific suffix match. The bypass is data-dependent (some child labels will win, some will lose), making it operationally non-intuitive.
PoC
- Adjust COREDNS_BIN in the PoC to point at right path (see the top-level const definitions for tunables as well)
- Run python3 ./acl-repro.py
- Expected output: *** Baseline (only subzone transfer rule) *** axfr a.example.org.: rcode=5 ancount=0 (expected REFUSED=5)
*** Candidate (add permissive parent transfer rule) *** axfr a.example.org.: rcode=0 ancount=5 (expected NOERROR=0 with ancount>0)
*** OK *** Subzone transfer ACL bypass reproduced: adding a permissive parent-zone stanza can override a stricter child-zone stanza due to lexicographic zone selection.
Impact
Unauthorized zone transfer can expose full zone contents to a remote network client that was intended to be denied by a subzone-specific transfer policy.
The vulnerability can be exploited over the network without needing physical access. It is easy for an attacker to exploit this vulnerability. An attacker does not need any special privileges or access rights. No user interaction is needed for the attacker to exploit this vulnerability. The impact is confined to the system where the vulnerability exists. There is a high impact on the confidentiality of the information.
Exploitation attempts have been detected. Elevated vigilance and prompt remediation are advised.
The exploit probability is very low. The vulnerability is unlikely to be exploited in the next 30 days.
We did not find any exploit available. Neither in GitHub repositories nor in the Exploit-Database.
Browse More
Continuously monitor your dependencies and get alerted when vulnerabilities like this one affect your stack.
Checkout DevGuard