Executive Summary

CVE-2020-8619 affects ISC BIND9 (v9.11.14‑9.11.19, 9.14.9‑9.14.12, 9.16.0‑9.16.3). If a zone contains an empty non‑terminal record with a wildcard (*), a privileged attacker who can modify zone data can trigger a denial‑of‑service by exhausting server resources. The flaw requires significant privileges and is easily traceable, so exploitation is considered unlikely.

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Authoritative CVE Metadata - CVSS Base Score: 4.9 (MEDIUM) - Published: 2020-06-17T22:15:13.070 - Last Modified: 2026-09-01T20:57:40.370

Original Description: In ISC BIND9 versions BIND 9.11.14 -> 9.11.19, BIND 9.14.9 -> 9.14.12, BIND 9.16.0 -> 9.16.3, BIND Supported Preview Edition 9.11.14-S1 -> 9.11.19-S1: Unless a nameserver is providing authoritative service for one or more zones and at least one zone contains an empty non-terminal entry containing an asterisk ("*") character, this defect cannot be encountered. A would-be attacker who is allowed to change zone content could theoretically introduce such a record in order to exploit this condition to cause denial of service, though we consider the use of this vector unlikely because any such attack would require a significant privilege level and be easily traceable.

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