CVE-2023-2911

25

FAUCET Score

CVE-2023-2911 is a denial-of-service vulnerability affecting specific versions of BIND 9 resolvers, including those from Debian, Fedora Project, ISC, and NetApp. When configured with "stale-answer-enable yes;" and "stale-answer-client-timeout 0;", reaching the "recursive-clients" quota can lead to a stack overflow and unexpected termination of the named process. This vulnerability carries a CVSS score of 7.5 (High), indicating it can be exploited remotely with low attack complexity, resulting in a high impact on availability. There is no user interaction required for a successful attack. Currently, there is no known active exploitation, nor is public exploit code available in Metasploit, Nuclei, or ExploitDB. While the vulnerability has garnered some community discussion and media coverage, it is not listed on the CISA KEV catalog.

Impacted Technologies

Vendor	Product	Version(s)	CPE
		>= 9.16.33, <= 9.16.41CPE matchmatch criteria	cpe:2.3:a:isc:bind:::::-:::*
		>= 9.16.33, <= 9.16.41CPE matchmatch criteria	cpe:2.3:a:isc:bind:::::supported_preview:::*
		>= 9.18.7, <= 9.18.15CPE matchmatch criteria	cpe:2.3:a:isc:bind:::::-:::*
		>= 9.18.11, <= 9.18.15CPE matchmatch criteria	cpe:2.3:a:isc:bind:::::supported_preview:::*
		11.0CPE matchmatch criteria	cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:11.0:::::::*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

7.5HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector

NETWORK

Attack Complexity

LOW

Privileges Required

NONE

User Interaction

NONE

Scope

UNCHANGED

Confidentiality Impact

NONE

Integrity Impact

NONE

Availability Impact

HIGH

Exploitability Score

3.9

Impact Score

3.6

CvssVersion

3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score

2.45%

Probability of exploitation in next 30 days

EPSS Percentile

82.7%

Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group

As of 2026-07-28

Model: v2026.06.15

This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0245 is in the 69th percentile among its peer group of 51,553 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.0 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.1 Mastodon, and 0.4 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.1 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (4)

consensyspatch availablevia llm_extracted

Fixed in: 9.18.16-S1

microsoftpatch availablevia msrc

Product: cbl2 bind 9.16.44-1 on CBL Mariner 2.0Fixed in: 9.16.44-1

nessuspatch availablevia llm_extracted

Fixed in: 9.18.16-S1

alistgovendor investigatingvia llm_extracted

Vendor Advisories (5)

redhatCVE-2023-2911Moderate

bind: Exceeding the recursive-clients quota may cause named to terminate unexpectedly when stale-answer-client-timeout is set to 0

microsoft2023-Jun/CVE-2023-2911Important

Exceeding the recursive-clients quota may cause named to terminate unexpectedly when stale-answer-client-timeout is set to 0

nessusllm-nessus-e77cedcc23e10113

alistgollm-alistgo-f39f878ee5a7b26c

Exceeding the recursive-clients quota may cause named to terminate unexpectedly when stale-answer-client-timeout is set to 0

consensysllm-consensys-e029dc18577049c9

References

kb.isc.org / docs/cve-2023-2911

Vendor Advisory

lists.fedoraproject.org / archives/list/[email protected]/message/SEFCEVCTYEMKTWA7V7EYPI5YQQ4JWDLI

Mailing ListThird Party Advisory

lists.fedoraproject.org / archives/list/[email protected]/message/U3K6AJK7RRSR53HRF5GGKPA6PDUDWOD2

Mailing ListThird Party Advisory

security.netapp.com / advisory/ntap-20230703-0010

Third Party Advisory

debian.org / security/2023/dsa-5439

Third Party Advisory

openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2023/06/21/6

Mailing ListPatchThird Party Advisory