Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-68151

DoS in Coredns.Io Coredns ≤ 1.14.0

Published
08 January 2026
Modified
22 January 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v4 6.6
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U/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
EPSS Score 0.0043 35th percentile
Risk Priority 41 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-68151 is a medium-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Coredns.Io Coredns. Its CVSS base score is 6.6 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Network Denial of Service (T1498); ranked at the 35th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-10 (Concurrent Session Control) and SC-6 (Resource Availability) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary

Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.

CVE-2025-68151 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in CoreDNS, a flexible DNS server that chains plugins, affecting versions prior to 1.14.0. Specifically, the gRPC, HTTPS, and HTTP/3 server implementations lack critical resource-limiting controls, such as connection limits, stream limits, or message size constraints. This allows resource exhaustion through uncontrolled concurrent connections, streams, or oversized request bodies. The issue shares similarities with CVE-2025-47950, a QUIC-based DoS vulnerability, but extends to these additional server types. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 7.5 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H) and is associated with CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling).

An unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability over the network with low complexity, requiring no privileges or user interaction. By opening numerous concurrent connections or streams, or sending oversized request bodies, the attacker can exhaust server memory, leading to performance degradation or complete crashes. This impacts the availability of CoreDNS deployments using the affected protocols, potentially disrupting DNS resolution services.

CoreDNS version 1.14.0 addresses the vulnerability with a patch that introduces the necessary resource limits. Security practitioners should upgrade to this version immediately. Detailed information, including the fixing commit and pull request, is available in the CoreDNS GitHub security advisory (GHSA-527x-5wrf-22m2), commit 0d8cbb1a6bcb6bc9c1a489865278b8725fa20812, and pull request 7490.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

CoreDNS is a DNS server that chains plugins. Prior to version 1.14.0, multiple CoreDNS server implementations (gRPC, HTTPS, and HTTP/3) lack critical resource-limiting controls. An unauthenticated remote attacker can exhaust memory and degrade or crash the server by opening many…

more

concurrent connections, streams, or sending oversized request bodies. The issue is similar in nature to CVE-2025-47950 (QUIC DoS) but affects additional server types that do not enforce connection limits, stream limits, or message size constraints. Version 1.14.0 contains a patch.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1498 Network Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Network Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of targeted resources to users.
T1499 Endpoint Denial of Service Impact
Adversaries may perform Endpoint Denial of Service (DoS) attacks to degrade or block the availability of services to users.
T1499.003 Application Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may target resource intensive features of applications to cause a denial of service (DoS), denying availability to those applications.
T1498.001 Direct Network Flood Impact
Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by directly sending a high-volume of network traffic to a target.
T1498.002 Reflection Amplification Impact
Adversaries may attempt to cause a denial of service (DoS) by reflecting a high-volume of network traffic to a target.
T1499.001 OS Exhaustion Flood Impact
Adversaries may launch a denial of service (DoS) attack targeting an endpoint's operating system (OS).
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2025-47950Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2026-32934Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2026-26018Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2026-32936Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2026-62309Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2026-62299Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2026-33190Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2026-35579Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2026-33489Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns
CVE-2023-28452Same product: Coredns.Io Coredns

Affected Assets

coredns.io
coredns
≤ 1.14.0

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)
  • 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V15.4.4

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

Directly enforces a hard limit on concurrent sessions, structurally preventing unbounded resource allocation.

Requires explicit allocation of resources by priority or quota, directly stopping unlimited allocation.

Imposes a limit on consecutive invalid attempts, preventing one specific class of unbounded resource consumption.

Reduces impact of resulting DoS events without preventing the underlying lack of allocation limits.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.IR-04 mostly match
degrades

Monitoring capacity and taking action to maintain availability directly reduces unchecked resource allocation.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

finds

Baseline comparison of CPU, memory and bandwidth usage helps surface uncontrolled resource allocations before they cause service degradation.

prevents

Capacity projections and elasticity measures ensure that allocation requests are bounded and can be throttled, reducing the window in which an attacker can force unbounded resource reservations.

mitigates

Defining retention periods and deletion schedules for backup copies prevents indefinite accumulation of data on storage media without corresponding resource-management controls.

mitigates

Architectural redundancy and automatic failover limit the impact of an attacker who forces excessive allocations, because spare capacity can absorb the load until the primary instance recovers.

none

Documented incident response procedures that include activation of continuity plans and controlled recovery help ensure that resource consumption triggered by an incident is bounded and managed rather than left unbounded.

mitigates

Mandating tested continuity procedures that preserve or replace resource-limiting controls prevents an attacker from exploiting the absence of throttling mechanisms during an outage.

Hardening callouts derived

Configuration rules from DISA STIG baselines that bear on weaknesses of the type cited by this CVE. Each rule is shown with the relationship its mapping actually records, against the CWE it was authored against. Derived via CVE→CWE over `controls_xwalks` (authoritative rows only; rows rated `none` are excluded).

Oracle Linux 8 (2 rules)
  • V-248552 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
  • V-248553 OL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
Oracle Linux 9 (2 rules)
  • V-271710 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic are terminated after 10 minutes of becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
  • V-271709 OL 9 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770
RHEL 8 (1 rule)
  • V-230244 RHEL 8 must be configured so that all network connections associated with SSH traffic terminate after becoming unresponsive. prevents CWE-770

References