CVE-2026-123606
Received Received - Intake

Hickory DNS Recursor Referral Loop Amplification

Publication date: 2026-11-08

Last updated on: 2026-11-08

Assigner: VulnCheck

Description
The hickory-dns recursor in hickory-recursor 0.25.0-alpha.3 through 0.25.2 and hickory-resolver 0.26.0-alpha.1 before 0.26.2 iterates every out-of-bailiwick NS target lacking glue in a referral without any per-query work budget. Remote attackers can serve such referrals to force A and AAAA lookups per target, amplifying traffic against remote servers or exhausting recursor resources.

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Meta Information

Published
2026-11-08
Last Modified
2026-11-08
Generated
2026-11-08
AI Q&A
2026-11-08
EPSS Evaluated
N/A
NVD
CVE-2026-123606
EUVD
EUVD-2026-119365

Affected Vendors & Products

Showing 2 associated CPEs
Vendor Product Version / Range
hickory recursor to 0.25.2 (inc)
hickory resolver to 0.26.2 (exc)

Helpful Resources

Exploitability

CWE
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KEV
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CWE ID Description
CWE-400 The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.

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Executive Summary

This vulnerability affects the hickory-dns recursor and resolver libraries. It allows remote attackers to send specially crafted referrals that force the resolver to perform excessive DNS lookups for out-of-bailiwick NS targets without proper resource limits. This can lead to amplified traffic against external servers or exhaust recursor resources.

Impact Analysis

This vulnerability can impact you by causing increased network traffic, potential denial-of-service conditions on your DNS resolver, and degraded performance for DNS resolution. Attackers may exploit it to overload your systems or target other networks using your resolver as an amplifier.

Mitigation Strategies

Upgrade hickory-recursor to versions 0.25.3 or later and hickory-resolver to versions 0.26.2 or later to address the issue.

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