CVE-2020-25685

high
Published — · Modified —
CVSS v3
CVSS v2
VIR risk
8.0

Description

A flaw was found in dnsmasq before version 2.83. When getting a reply from a forwarded query, dnsmasq checks in forward.c:reply_query(), which is the forwarded query that matches the reply, by only using a weak hash of the query name. Due to the weak hash (CRC32 when dnsmasq is compiled without DNSSEC, SHA-1 when it is) this flaw allows an off-path attacker to find several different domains all having the same hash, substantially reducing the number of attempts they would have to perform to forge a reply and get it accepted by dnsmasq. This is in contrast with RFC5452, which specifies that the query name is one of the attributes of a query that must be used to match a reply. This flaw could be abused to perform a DNS Cache Poisoning attack. If chained with CVE-2020-25684 the attack complexity of a successful attack is reduced. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data integrity.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
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-2020-25685

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: suse — https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2020-25685.html

vendor Authored 2026-05-27

Vendor advisory: arch — https://security.archlinux.org/ASA-202101-38

OS impact

OSVersionStatusFixed in
arch archfixed2.83-1
debian debianbookwormfixed2.83-1
debian debianbullseyefixed2.83-1
debian debianforkyfixed2.83-1
debian debiansidfixed2.83-1
debian debiantrixiefixed2.83-1
suse slesaffected

References

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