SOC status:Duty analyst on shift

UK Cyber Defence
VulnerabilityModified

CVE-2020-25681

A heap-based buffer overflow was discovered in the way RRSets are sorted before validating with DNSSEC data.

HIGH 8.1EPSS 84.1%

Does this matter?

EPSS puts the probability of exploitation in the next 30 days at 84.1%, higher than 100% of all known CVEs. Patch or mitigate before the next change window.

Description

A flaw was found in dnsmasq before version 2.83. A heap-based buffer overflow was discovered in the way RRSets are sorted before validating with DNSSEC data. An attacker on the network, who can forge DNS replies such as that they are accepted as valid, could use this flaw to cause a buffer overflow with arbitrary data in a heap memory segment, possibly executing code on the machine. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.

CVSS 3.1
8.1 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
EPSS
84.08% probability · 100th percentile
Public exploits
None in Exploit-DB
CISA KEV
Not listed
Weakness
CWE-122
Affected
thekelleys/dnsmasq · fedoraproject/fedora · debian/debian linux
Source
secalert@redhat.com
EPSS trend
0%43%85%22 October 2026: 84.08%3 November 2026: 84.08%22 October 20263 November 2026

EPSS moved from 84.1% on 22 October 2026 to 84.1% on 3 November 2026. The dashed line is the ten per cent mark our analysts treat as “patch before the next change window”.

Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.