Heap-based buffer overflow in the arescreatequery function in c-ares 1.x before 1.12.0 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds write) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a hostname with an escaped trailing dot.

The c-ares function aresparsenaptrreply(), which is used for parsing NAPTR responses, could be triggered to read memory outside of the given input buffer if the passed in DNS response packet was crafted in a particular way.

A Node.js application that allows an attacker to trigger a DNS request for a host of their choice could trigger a Denial of Service in versions < 15.2.1, < 14.15.1, and < 12.19.1 by getting the application to resolve a DNS record with a larger number of responses. This is fixed in 15.2.1, 14.15.1, and 12.19.1.

A flaw was found in c-ares library, where a missing input validation check of host names returned by DNS (Domain Name Servers) can lead to output of wrong hostnames which might potentially lead to Domain Hijacking. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.

c-ares is an asynchronous resolver library. From 1.32.3 through 1.34.4, there is a use-after-free in readanswers() when processanswer() may re-enqueue a query either due to a DNS Cookie Failure or when the upstream server does not properly support EDNS, or possibly on TCP queries if the remote closed the connection immediately after a response. If there was an issue trying to put that new transaction on the wire, it would close the connection handle, but readanswers() was still expecting the connection handle to be available to possibly dequeue other responses. In theory a remote attacker might be able to trigger this by flooding the target with ICMP UNREACHABLE packets if they also control the upstream nameserver and can return a result with one of those conditions, this has been untested. Otherwise only a local attacker might be able to change system behavior to make send()/write() return a failure condition. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.34.5.

A possible use-after-free and double-free in c-ares lib version 1.16.0 if aresdestroy() is called prior to aresgetaddrinfo() completing. This flaw possibly allows an attacker to crash the service that uses c-ares lib. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to this service availability.

CVE-2025-31498

Impact

Patches

Versions 1.32.3 - 1.34.4 are affected. Patch in 1.34.5.

Workarounds

None

References https://github.com/c-ares/c-ares/releases/tag/v1.34.5

Credit

Reported by Erik Lax