CVE-2025-68151
Published: 08 January 2026
Summary
CVE-2025-68151 is a high-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Coredns.Io Coredns. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application Exhaustion Flood (T1499.003); ranked at the 43.6th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Likely Mitigating ControlsAI
Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.
This control implements explicit throttling on session allocation, addressing the weakness of allocating resources without limits.
Plan testing exercises resource allocation limits and throttling during simulated failures, directly addressing weaknesses that allow unbounded resource use.
Contingency plan updates ensure recovery strategies address unbounded resource allocation, making it harder for attackers to exploit lack of throttling to cause prolonged outages.
Provides continuity when unbounded resource allocation at the primary site leads to exhaustion and downtime.
Alternate services allow operations to continue when primary allocation of resources lacks limits or throttling.
Explicit planning of security-related actions requires defining limits, windows, and resource allocations, making allocation without throttling far less likely.
Measures of performance include tracking allocation behavior and throttling effectiveness, reducing the window for resource exhaustion attacks.
Imposes an inactivity-based limit on network resource allocation, throttling the number of concurrently held connections.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Directly enables application-layer resource exhaustion DoS via uncontrolled connections/streams/requests against CoreDNS servers.
NVD Description
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…
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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.
Deeper analysisAI
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.
Details
- CWE(s)