Cyber Resilience

CVE-2025-68468

Avahi ≤ 0.9

Published
12 January 2026
Modified
16 January 2026
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 6.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
EPSS Score 0.0033 26th percentile
Risk Priority 35 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2025-68468 is a medium-severity Reachable Assertion (CWE-617) vulnerability in Avahi Avahi. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Application or System Exploitation (T1499.004); ranked at the 26th 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 SC-5 (Denial-of-service Protection) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Avahi is a system which facilitates service discovery on a local network via the mDNS/DNS-SD protocol suite. In 0.9-rc2 and earlier, avahi-daemon can be crashed by sending unsolicited announcements containing CNAME resource records pointing it to resource records with short…

more

TTLs. As soon as they expire avahi-daemon crashes.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI

T1499.004 Application or System Exploitation Impact
Adversaries may exploit software vulnerabilities that can cause an application or system to crash and deny availability to users.
Why these techniques?

CVE enables crafted mDNS packet exploitation to crash avahi-daemon, directly matching application exploitation for endpoint DoS.

Confidence: HIGH · MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise v19.0

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2026-34933Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2025-68276Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2025-68471Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2026-24401Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2025-59529Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2023-38469Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2023-38472Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2023-38471Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2023-38473Same product: Avahi Avahi
CVE-2023-38470Same product: Avahi Avahi

Affected Assets

avahi
avahi
0.9 · ≤ 0.9

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)
  • SI-10 Information Input Validation
  • SC-5 Denial-of-service Protection
  • SC-7 Boundary Protection
Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)

Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI

prevent

Directly requires validation of mDNS/DNS-SD inputs (CNAME/TTL records) to reject malformed announcements before they reach avahi-daemon's assertion logic.

prevent

Provides explicit denial-of-service protections (rate limiting, traffic shaping) against crafted unsolicited mDNS packets that trigger the reachable assertion crash.

prevent

Boundary protection can restrict or filter mDNS traffic at the network edge, limiting exposure to external or malicious announcements that exploit the short-TTL CNAME flaw.

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.PS-06 mostly match
prevents

Secure SDLC practices directly prevent unsafe assertions from being coded in reachable paths.

DE.CM-09 partial match
prevents

Runtime monitoring of software can detect assertion-triggered crashes as adverse events.

ID.RA-01 partial match
prevents

Vulnerability identification processes can discover and record reachable-assertion flaws before deployment.

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.

detects

Security testing in development can detect reachable assertions before release, reducing the likelihood of exploitation.

prevents

Secure development lifecycle mandates defensive coding and input validation that prevent reachable assertions from being triggered by untrusted data.

prevents

Application security requirements can specify that assertions must not be reachable from attacker-controlled inputs.

prevents

Secure architecture principles discourage the use of assertions for runtime error handling that an attacker could exploit.

prevents

Secure coding standards explicitly ban the use of assert() or equivalent statements that can be triggered by external input.

References