Security Advisories (5)
CVE-2007-6341 (2008-02-08)

Allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (program "croak") via a crafted DNS response.

CVE-2007-3409 (2007-06-26)

Net::DNS before 0.60, a Perl module, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (stack consumption) via a malformed compressed DNS packet with self-referencing pointers, which triggers an infinite loop.

CVE-2007-3377 (2007-06-25)

Header.pm in Net::DNS before 0.60, a Perl module, (1) generates predictable sequence IDs with a fixed increment and (2) can use the same starting ID for all child processes of a forking server, which allows remote attackers to spoof DNS responses, as originally reported for qpsmtp and spamassassin.

CVE-2026-64193 (2026-07-20)

Net::DNS versions through 1.55 for Perl allow remote execution injection via EDNS EXTENDED ERROR. Net::DNS::RR::OPT::EXTENDED_ERROR::_decompose parses the EXTRA-TEXT field of an EDNS EXTENDED-ERROR option (RFC 8914) by tokenising the raw bytes and passing the result to Perl's eval. There is some escaping done for $ and @, but not for backticks. This can be exploited for command execution if $pkt->edns->option('EXTENDED-ERROR') is called in array context, for example with a payload of {0:`"<command>"`} in EXTRA-TEXT.

CVE-2026-64194 (2026-07-20)

Net::DNS versions through 1.55 for Perl allow Denial of Service via deep DNS compression pointer chains. Net::DNS::DomainName::decode follows RFC 1035 compression pointers by recursing into itself with no depth limit. It is possible to construct a name which saturates the call stack (at least with larger TCP responses), leading to a potential Denial of Service. The guard `$link < $offset` prevents forward and circular chains, but still allows arbitrarily long backward chains. The per-offset cache (`$cache`) is populated at the start of each call and short-circuits only re-traverses of the same offset - the initial descent through a fresh chain still recurses at full depth. A crafted packet can chain two-byte compression pointers so that each one points two bytes earlier than the previous, producing a chain length of `offset / 2`. For the 14-bit pointer field (max offset 16383) this gives up to ~8191 recursive frames. For a TCP DNS message the limit is the 16-bit length field (~32767 frames). Perl's default C stack handles only a few thousand frames; beyond that the process receives SIGSEGV or similar, which is a denial-of-service for any application parsing untrusted DNS data. The vulnerability is triggered by `Net::DNS::Packet->new(\$wire)` i.e. any point where the library decodes a DNS message from the network.

NAME

Net::DNS::Update - Create a DNS update packet

SYNOPSIS

use Net::DNS::Update;

DESCRIPTION

Net::DNS::Update is a front-end for creating Net::DNS::Packet objects to be used for making DNS dynamic updates. Programmers should refer to RFC 2136 for the semantics of dynamic updates.

WARNING: This code is still under development. Please use with caution on production nameservers.

METHODS

new

$packet = Net::DNS::Update->new;
$packet = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
$packet = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com", "HS");

Returns a Net::DNS::Packet object suitable for performing a DNS dynamic update. Specifically, it creates a packet with the header opcode set to UPDATE and the zone record type to SOA (per RFC 2136, Section 2.3).

Programs must use the push method to add RRs to the prerequisite, update, and additional sections before performing the update.

Arguments are the zone name and the class. If the zone is omitted, the default domain will be taken from the resolver configuration. If the class is omitted, it defaults to IN.

Future versions of Net::DNS may provide a simpler interface for making dynamic updates.

EXAMPLES

The first example below shows a complete program; subsequent examples show only the creation of the update packet.

Add a new host

    #!/usr/bin/perl -w
    
    use Net::DNS;
    
    # Create the update packet.
    $update = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
    
    # Prerequisite is that no A records exist for the name.
    $update->push("pre", nxrrset("foo.example.com. A"));
    
    # Add two A records for the name.
    $update->push("update", rr_add("foo.example.com. 86400 A 192.168.1.2"));
    $update->push("update", rr_add("foo.example.com. 86400 A 172.16.3.4"));
    
    # Send the update to the zone's primary master.
    $res = Net::DNS::Resolver->new;
    $res->nameservers("primary-master.example.com");
    $reply = $res->send($update);
    
    # Did it work?
    if (defined $reply) {
	if ($reply->header->rcode eq "NOERROR") {
	    print "Update succeeded\n";
	}
	else {
            print "Update failed: ", $reply->header->rcode, "\n";
	}
    }
    else {
        print "Update failed: ", $res->errorstring, "\n";
    }

Add an MX record for a name that already exists

$update = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
$update->push("pre", yxdomain("example.com"));
$update->push("update", rr_add("example.com MX 10 mailhost.example.com"));

Add a TXT record for a name that doesn't exist

$update = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
$update->push("pre", nxdomain("info.example.com"));
$update->push("update", rr_add("info.example.com TXT 'yabba dabba doo'"));

Delete all A records for a name

$update = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
$update->push("pre", yxrrset("foo.example.com A"));
$update->push("update", rr_del("foo.example.com A"));

Delete all RRs for a name

$update = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
$update->push("pre", yxdomain("byebye.example.com"));
$update->push("update", rr_del("byebye.example.com"));

Perform a signed update

$key_name = "tsig-key";
$key = "awwLOtRfpGE+rRKF2+DEiw==";

$update = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
$update->push("update", rr_add("foo.example.com A 10.1.2.3"));
$update->push("update", rr_add("bar.example.com A 10.4.5.6"));
$update->sign_tsig($key_name, $key);

Another way to perform a signed update

$key_name = "tsig-key";
$key = "awwLOtRfpGE+rRKF2+DEiw==";

$update = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
$update->push("update", rr_add("foo.example.com A 10.1.2.3"));
$update->push("update", rr_add("bar.example.com A 10.4.5.6"));
$update->push("additional", Net::DNS::RR->new("$key_name TSIG $key"));

Perform a signed update with a customized TSIG record

$key_name = "tsig-key";
$key = "awwLOtRfpGE+rRKF2+DEiw==";

$tsig = Net::DNS::RR->new("$key_name TSIG $key");
$tsig->fudge(60);

$update = Net::DNS::Update->new("example.com");
$update->push("update", rr_add("foo.example.com A 10.1.2.3"));
$update->push("update", rr_add("bar.example.com A 10.4.5.6"));
$update->push("additional", $tsig);

BUGS

This code is still under development. Please use with caution on production nameservers.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (c) 1997-2002 Michael Fuhr. All rights reserved. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

perl(1), Net::DNS, Net::DNS::Resolver, Net::DNS::Header, Net::DNS::Packet, Net::DNS::Question, Net::DNS::RR, RFC 2136, RFC 2845