Calling gethostbyaddr or gethostbyaddrr with a configured nsswitch.conf that specifies the library's DNS backend in the GNU C library version 2.34 to version 2.43 could result in an invalid DNS hostname being returned to the caller in violation of the DNS specification.

The deprecated functions nsprintrrf, nsprintrr and fpnquery in the GNU C Library version 2.2 and newer fail to validate the RDATA content against the RDATA length in a DNS response when processing LOC, CERT, TKEY or TSIG records, which may allow an attacker to craft a DNS response, causing a target application to crash or read uninitialized memory.

These functions are for application debugging only and hence not in the path of code executed by the DNS resolver. Further, they have been deprecated since version 2.34 and should not be used by any new applications. Applications should consider porting away from these interfaces since they may be removed in future versions.