libnet-dns-perl: Net::DNS versions through 1.55 for Perl allow Denial of Service via deep DNS compression pointer chains
CVE-2026-64194 is fixed in 4 products on 1 platform, first by DEBIAN-CVE-2026-64194, released July 24, 2026. It is not reported as exploited. Patch Radar priority: High.
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.
Where it's fixed
| Product | Fixed in | Fix | Released |
|---|---|---|---|
| Linux | |||
| libnet-dns-perl · Debian 12.15 (bookworm) | 1.36-1+deb12u1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-64194 | Jul 24, 2026 |
| libnet-dns-perl · Debian 13.5 (trixie) | 1.56-0+deb13u1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-64194 | Jul 24, 2026 |
| libnet-dns-perl · Debian 14 | 1.56-1 | DEBIAN-CVE-2026-64194 | Jul 24, 2026 |
| perl-Net-DNS · amzn 2023 | 1.56-1.amzn2023.0.1 | ALAS2023-2026-2046 | Aug 3, 2026 |
| perl-Net-DNS · opensuse-leap 16.0 | 1.570.0-bp160.1.1 | OPENSUSE-SU-2026:21859-1 | Sep 15, 2026 |
| perl-Net-DNS · sles 15.6 | 1.14-150000.3.3.1 | SUSE-SU-2026:3456-1 | Aug 3, 2026 |
| perl-Net-DNS · sles 15.7 | 1.14-150000.3.3.1 | SUSE-SU-2026:3456-1 | Aug 3, 2026 |
| perl-Net-DNS-Nameserver · amzn 2023 | 1.56-1.amzn2023.0.1 | ALAS2023-2026-2046 | Aug 3, 2026 |
| perl-Net-DNS-tests · amzn 2023 | 1.56-1.amzn2023.0.1 | ALAS2023-2026-2046 | Aug 3, 2026 |
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