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CVE-2025-25188 — Vulnerability in hickory-proto — CVE Details

MEDIUM

Hickory DNS's DNSSEC validation may accept broken authentication chains

Published February 10, 2025Updated September 10, 2026Source: osv

Summary

### Summary The DNSSEC validation routines treat entire RRsets of DNSKEY records as trusted once they have established trust in only one of the DNSKEYs. As a result, if a zone includes a DNSKEY with a public key that matches a configured trust anchor, all keys in that zone will be trusted to authenticate other records in the zone. There is a second variant of this vulnerability involving DS records, where an authenticated DS record covering one DNSKEY leads to trust in signatures made by an unrelated DNSKEY in the same zone. ### Details `verify_dnskey_rrset()` will return `Ok(true)` if any record's public key matches a trust anchor. This results in `verify_rrset()` returning a `Secure` proof. This ultimately results in successfully verifying a response containing DNSKEY records. `verify_default_rrset()` looks up DNSKEY records by calling `handle.lookup()`, which takes the above code path. There's a comment following this that says "DNSKEYs were already validated by the inner query in the above lookup", but this is not the case. To fully verify the whole RRset of DNSKEYs, it would be necessary to check self-signatures by the trusted key over the other keys. Later in `verify_default_rrset()`, `verify_rrset_with_dnskey()` is called multiple times with different keys and signatures, and if any call succeeds, then its `Proof` is returned. Similarly, `verify_dnskey_rrset()` returns `Ok(false)` if any DNSKEY record is covered by a DS record. A comment says "If all the keys are valid, then we are secure", but this is only checking that one key is authenticated by a DS in the parent zone's delegation point. This time, after control flow returns to `verify_rrset()`, it will call `verify_default_rrset()`. The special handling for DNSKEYs in `verify_default_rrset()` will then call `verify_rrset_with_dnskey()` using each KSK DNSKEY record, and if one call succeeds, return its `Proof`. If there are multiple KSK DNSKEYs in the RRset, then this leads to another authentication break. We need to either pass the authenticated DNSKEYs from the DS covering check to the RRSIG validation, or we need to perform this RRSIG validation of the DNSKEY RRset inside `verify_dnskey_rrset()` and cut `verify_default_rrset()` out of DNSKEY RRset validation entirely. ### PoC The proof of concepts have been integrated into the conformance test suite, as `resolver::dnssec::scenarios::bogus::bogus_zone_plus_trust_anchor_dnskey` and `resolver::dnssec::scenarios::bogus::bogus_zone_plus_ds_covered_dnskey`. ### Impact This impacts Hickory DNS users relying on DNSSEC verification in the client library, stub resolver, or recursive resolver.

Advisory Timeline

  • First published February 10, 2025 (609 days ago).
  • Last revised September 10, 2026 — 576 days after initial publication.

Remediation

Upgrade to the fixed version using your package manager.

Cargo
Update hickory-proto to 0.24.3 or later
cargo update -p hickory-proto --precise 0.24.3

After upgrading, run your dependency scanner again to confirm the vulnerability is resolved.

Affected Packages (1)

Affects 1 ecosystem: crates.io (1).

PackageEcosystemAffectedFixed In
hickory-proto
crates.io
All versions0.24.3

Vulnerability Classification

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) identifiers for this vulnerability type.

  • CWE-345
    Insufficient Verification of Data AuthenticityMITRE

CVSS Score Breakdown

What the CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) 6.5 score means for each attack dimension.

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
Low
User Interaction
None
Scope
X
Confidentiality
—
Integrity
—
Availability
—

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2025-25188?
Hickory DNS's DNSSEC validation may accept broken authentication chains This vulnerability has been assigned a severity rating of MEDIUM (CVSS score: 6.5/10).
How do I check if my project is affected by CVE-2025-25188?
CVE-2025-25188 affects hickory-proto. Use GeekWala's free vulnerability scanner to check your dependencies against CVE-2025-25188 and 200,000+ other known vulnerabilities.

Severity & Exploitability

CVSS Score
6.5

Exploitation requires specific conditions or has limited impact. Remediate within weeks.

Also Known As

GHSA-37wc-h8xc-5hc4

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