Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:LSummary
CVE-2026-33257 is a medium-severity Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling (CWE-770) vulnerability in Powerdns Recursor. Its CVSS base score is 5.3 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Network Denial of Service (T1498); ranked at the 41th 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-2026-33257 is a denial-of-service vulnerability in the internal web servers of multiple PowerDNS products, including PowerDNS Authoritative, PowerDNS Recursor, and dnsdist. It stems from CWE-770 (Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling), where an attacker can send a specially crafted web request that triggers unlimited memory allocation, exhausting system resources. The internal web server, which exposes a management interface, is disabled by default, limiting exposure unless explicitly enabled. The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 5.3 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L), indicating medium severity with low availability impact.
Any unauthenticated remote attacker can exploit this vulnerability over the network with low complexity and no user interaction required. By sending a malicious web request to the enabled internal web server, the attacker causes progressive memory exhaustion, potentially leading to service degradation or complete denial of service on the affected DNS server. No confidentiality or integrity impacts are possible, and exploitation requires the web server to be active.
PowerDNS has published targeted security advisories addressing this issue: PowerDNS Advisory 2026-05 for Authoritative, PowerDNS Advisory 2026-03 for Recursor, and PowerDNS Advisory 2026-04 for dnsdist, available at the respective documentation sites. Practitioners should consult these for patching instructions, configuration guidance to disable the web server where unnecessary, and any workarounds.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-24720
Vulnerability Data
An attacker can send a web request that causes unlimited memory allocation in the internal web server, leading to a denial of service. The internal web server is disabled by default.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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- 5 hardening rules · 3 OS baselines
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.
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.
Baseline comparison of CPU, memory and bandwidth usage helps surface uncontrolled resource allocations before they cause service degradation.
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.
Defining retention periods and deletion schedules for backup copies prevents indefinite accumulation of data on storage media without corresponding resource-management controls.
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.
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.
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