November 14, 2026

CVE Watchtower

CVE-2026-123602hickory-dns hickory-dns

NVD

Vulnerability Summary

The Hickory DNS recursor in all versions of hickory-recursor and in hickory-resolver 0.26.0-beta.1 before 0.26.2 (recursor feature) is vulnerable to ghost domain names attacks because it reuses child-side apex NS RRsets cached from zone NS queries for iterative resolution. By repeatedly querying a zone's NS records, an attacker keeps the stale RRset cached indefinitely, letting name servers whose delegation the parent revoked keep answering for the zone.
Severity Level
HIGH(8.2)
Published Date
Nov 8, 2026
Last Modified
Nov 9, 2026
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation yet
EPSS Score (30-Day)
0.27%Probability
Root Weakness (CWE)
CWE-672 ↗
See the MITRE CWE entry for the full definition of this weakness.
CVSS v4.0 Base Metrics — Score 8.2 (HIGH)
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityLow
Attack RequirementsPresent
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionNone
Confidentiality (Vulnerable System)None
Integrity (Vulnerable System)High
Availability (Vulnerable System)None
Confidentiality (Subsequent System)None
Integrity (Subsequent System)None
Availability (Subsequent System)None
Show CVSS v3.x metrics (score 5.9)
CVSS v3.1 Base Metrics — Score 5.9 (MEDIUM)
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N
Attack VectorNetwork
Attack ComplexityHigh
Privileges RequiredNone
User InteractionNone
ScopeUnchanged
ConfidentialityNone
IntegrityHigh
AvailabilityNone

Affected & Patched Versions

Affected Versions
  • hickory-dns hickory-dns <= 0.26.0-alpha.1
  • hickory-dns hickory-dns >= 0.26.0-beta.1 and < 0.26.2
Patched Versions
  • hickory-dns hickory-dns 0.26.0-alpha.1
  • hickory-dns hickory-dns 0.26.2

What to do

Plan remediation soon. No exploitation is confirmed yet, but the severity is high.

  1. Check whether you run hickory-dns hickory-dns and which version.
  2. Update to a patched version listed above, then confirm the new version.

Timeline

  • Nov 8, 2026Published
  • Nov 9, 2026Record last modified

Score, severity and exploitation changes are tracked from the day Watchtower started logging them.

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External References

Data last checked: Nov 14, 2026 02:13 UTC