CVE-2018-20994
Uncontrolled recursion in trust-dns-proto
An issue was discovered in the trust-dns-proto crate before 0.5.0-alpha.3 for Rust. There is infinite recursion because DNS message compression is mishandled.
Attack profile
How easy it is to exploit
- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges needed
- None
- User interaction
- None
What an attacker can affect
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- High
Exploit likelihood
What each source reports
NVD Score used
An issue was discovered in the trust-dns-proto crate before 0.5.0-alpha.3 for Rust. There is infinite recursion because DNS message compression is mishandled.
- Record
CVE-2018-20994- CVSS 3.0
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - CVSS 2.0
- 5.0 Medium
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P - Weakness
- CWE-674
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
CVE List No score
An issue was discovered in the trust-dns-proto crate before 0.5.0-alpha.3 for Rust. There is infinite recursion because DNS message compression is mishandled.
- Record
CVE-2018-20994- Updated
- 2026-11-02
EUVDEUVD-2021-1531 No score
An issue was discovered in the trust-dns-proto crate before 0.5.0-alpha.3 for Rust. There is infinite recursion because DNS message compression is mishandled.
- Record
EUVD-2021-1531- Updated
- 2026-11-03
GitHub AdvisoriesGHSA-369h-pjr2-6wrh
Uncontrolled recursion in trust-dns-proto
There's a stack overflow leading to a crash when Trust-DNS's parses a malicious DNS packet. Affected versions of this crate did not properly handle parsing of DNS message compression (RFC1035 section 4.1.4). The parser could be tricked into infinite loop when a compression offset pointed back to the same domain name to be parsed. This allows an attacker to craft a malicious DNS packet which when consumed with Trust-DNS could cause stack overflow and crash the affected software.
- Record
GHSA-369h-pjr2-6wrh- CVSS 3.0
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-674
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVGHSA-369h-pjr2-6wrh
Uncontrolled recursion in trust-dns-proto
There's a stack overflow leading to a crash when Trust-DNS's parses a malicious DNS packet. Affected versions of this crate did not properly handle parsing of DNS message compression (RFC1035 section 4.1.4). The parser could be tricked into infinite loop when a compression offset pointed back to the same domain name to be parsed. This allows an attacker to craft a malicious DNS packet which when consumed with Trust-DNS could cause stack overflow and crash the affected software.
- Record
GHSA-369h-pjr2-6wrh- CVSS 3.0
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Weakness
- CWE-674
- Updated
- 2026-11-02
OSVRUSTSEC-2018-0007
Stack overflow when parsing malicious DNS packet
There's a stack overflow leading to a crash when Trust-DNS's parses a malicious DNS packet.
Affected versions of this crate did not properly handle parsing of DNS message compression (RFC1035 section 4.1.4). The parser could be tricked into infinite loop when a compression offset pointed back to the same domain name to be parsed.
This allows an attacker to craft a malicious DNS packet which when consumed with Trust-DNS could cause stack overflow and crash the affected software.
The flaw was corrected by trust-dns-proto 0.4.3 and upcoming 0.5.0 release.
- Record
RUSTSEC-2018-0007- CVSS 3.0
- 7.5 High
CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H - Updated
- 2026-11-02
Affected products
Affected packages
| Package | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|
trust-dns-protocrates.io |
before 0.4.3 | 0.4.3 |
trust-dns-protocrates.io |
0.0.0-0 up to 0.4.3 | 0.4.3 |
History
| Recorded | Changed | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| aliases | EUVD | |
| first indexed | CVE List, GitHub Advisories, NVD, OSV |
Dates are when Every CVE recorded each change. Upstream dates may differ.
In short
CVE-2018-20994 is a high vulnerability (CVSS 7.5) in Trust-dns-proto Project Trust-dns-proto, published October 9, 2018. No source lists public exploit code. EPSS puts the chance of exploitation in the next 30 days at 1.41%, the 72nd percentile. Fixed in trust-dns-proto 0.4.3.