Answer in brief
CVE-2026-69184 records a High severity (CVSS 7.5) vulnerability in c-ares: CPU-exhaustion denial of service via unbounded DNS name compression pointer chains. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. The current feed maps c-ares/c-ares (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
Analysis pending evidence review
HOL Guard separates source facts from reviewed analysis. See the methodology.
CVSS is 7.5. The current sources do not mark it as known exploited. Treat this as a source-backed prioritization signal, not a statement about your environment.
Analysis status
Analysis pending evidence review
Factual feed record only; HOL analysis is not approved for indexing. Read the methodology.
The current feed maps c-ares/c-ares (generic). Check affected ranges and fixed versions before updating.
| Package | Affected range | Fixed version |
|---|---|---|
| c-ares/c-aresgeneric | <1.34.7 | 1.34.7 |
Published upstream
Sep 18, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordSource modified
Sep 24, 2026
Evidence: source:cvelist:source_dates:source-dates:recordFirst seen by HOL
Sep 18, 2026
c-ares is an asynchronous resolver library. Prior to 1.34.7, ares_dns_name_parse() enforces backward DNS compression pointers but does not bound the total pointer hops or assembled name length. A malicious DNS server can send a response containing a long descending pointer chain and many resource records whose NAME or RDATA fields refer to the chain, causing repeated decompression work that grows quadratically with message size. A single crafted response can stall the single-threaded c-ares event loop and deny DNS resolution, without causing memory corruption or information disclosure. This issue is fixed in version 1.34.7.
Quoted source text, attributed separately from HOL analysis.