CVE-2012-2978
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedquery.c in NSD 3.0.x through 3.0.8, 3.1.x through 3.1.1, and 3.2.x before 3.2.12 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and child process crash) via a crafted DNS packet.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceA NULL pointer dereference vulnerability exists in query.c of NSD versions 3.0.x-3.0.8, 3.1.x-3.1.1, and 3.2.x before 3.2.12. Remote attackers can crash child processes by sending specially crafted DNS packets that cause a NULL pointer to be dereferenced during query processing.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data= 3.0.0= 3.0.1= 3.0.2= 3.0.3= 3.0.4= 3.0.5= 3.0.6= 3.0.7= 3.0.8= 3.1.0= 3.1.1= 3.2.0CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Authentication
- None
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Partial
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Identify if NSD is installedRun 'which nsd' or check for the nsd process with 'ps aux | grep nsd', or look for nsd in /usr/sbin/ or /usr/local/sbin/Affected if The NSD DNS server binary is present on the system
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Determine installed NSD versionExecute 'nsd -v' or 'nsd -V' to display version information. If those flags are not available, check the package version via the system package manager (dpkg -l nsd or rpm -qi nsd)Affected if The command returns a version number in the 3.0.x, 3.1.x, or 3.2.x series
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Compare version to affected rangesCheck if the installed version matches: 3.0.0 through 3.0.8, 3.1.0 through 3.1.1, or any 3.2.x version before 3.2.12Affected if The installed version is 3.0.0-3.0.8, 3.1.0-3.1.1, or 3.2.0-3.2.11 (unpatched)
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Verify NSD is network-facingConfirm the NSD service is listening on port 53 and accepting queries, as the vulnerability is triggered by specially crafted DNS packets sent remotelyAffected if NSD is bound to a network interface accessible to remote attackers
You are affected if NSD version 3.0.0-3.0.8, 3.1.0-3.1.1, or 3.2.0-3.2.11 is installed and the service is reachable over the network.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataUpgrade NSD to version 3.0.9, 3.1.2, or 3.2.12 or later to patch the NULL pointer dereference in query.c. Until patched, consider rate-limiting or filtering untrusted DNS queries at the network perimeter.
- Consultation1.0 h
- Implementation2.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2012-2978 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2012-2978 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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