CVE-2024-8508
MEDIUM5.3EPSS 0.16%CPU exhaustion during message encoding due to O(n²) name compression
Published: 5/1/2026Modified: 5/7/2026
Description
During message encoding, `hickory-proto`'s `BinEncoder` stores pointers to labels that are candidates for name compression in a `Vec<(usize, Vec<u8>)>`. The name compression logic then searches for matches with a linear scan. A malicious message with many records can both introduce many candidate labels, and invoke this linear scan many times. This can amplify CPU exhaustion in DoS attacks. This is similar to [CVE-2024-8508](https://www.nlnetlabs.nl/downloads/unbound/CVE-2024-8508.txt). We recommend all affected users update to `hickory-proto` 0.26.1 for the fix.
Affected packages (4)
- Alpine/unboundfrom 0, < 1.20.0-r1
- crates.io/hickory-proto>= 0.3.1, < 0.26.1
- Debian/unboundfrom 0, < 1.13.1-1+deb11u4
- Debian/unboundfrom 0, < 1.13.1-1+deb11u4
CVSS scores
| Source | Version | Severity | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| osv | CVSS 3.1 | MEDIUM5.3 | CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L |
References (5)
- ADVISORYhttps://github.com/hickory-dns/hickory-dns/security/advisories/GHSA-q2qq-hmj6-3wpp
- ADVISORYhttps://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2026-0119.html
- ADVISORYhttps://security.alpinelinux.org/vuln/CVE-2024-8508
- ADVISORYhttps://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2024-8508
- PATCHhttps://crates.io/crates/hickory-proto