CVE-2016-6172

medium
Published 2016-09-26 · Modified 2026-05-06
CVSS v3
6.8
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:N/A:H
CVSS v2
7.1
VIR risk
6.8

Description

PowerDNS (aka pdns) Authoritative Server before 4.0.1 allows remote primary DNS servers to cause a denial of service (memory exhaustion and secondary DNS server crash) via a large (1) AXFR or (2) IXFR response.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
77%
Patch ETA

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: debian — https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2016-6172

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: suse — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-6172.html

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: secalert@redhat.com — https://github.com/sischkg/xfer-limit/blob/master/README.md

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: secalert@redhat.com — https://doc.powerdns.com/md/changelog/#powerdns-authoritative-server-401

OS impact

OSVersionStatusFixed in
suse slesaffected
suse suse42.1affected
suse suse13.2affected
debian debianbookwormfixed4.0.1-1
debian debianbullseyefixed4.0.1-1
debian debianforkyfixed4.0.1-1
debian debiansidfixed4.0.1-1
debian debiantrixiefixed4.0.1-1

Application impact

VendorProductVersionsFixed
powerdnsauthoritative_server{"endIncluding":"4.0.0"}

References

CWEs

CWE-400

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.