CVE-2025-5994 — Cache poisoning via the ECS-enabled Rebirthday Attack
A multi-vendor cache poisoning vulnerability named 'Rebirthday Attack' has been discovered in caching resolvers that support EDNS Client Subnet (ECS). Unbound is also vulnerable…
Published: 2025-07-16 · CVSS: 8.7 · CVSS 4.0
A multi-vendor cache poisoning vulnerability named 'Rebirthday Attack' has been discovered in caching resolvers that support EDNS Client Subnet (ECS). Unbound is also vulnerable when compiled with ECS support, i.e., '--enable-subnet', AND configured to send ECS information along with queries to upstream name servers, i.e., at least one of the 'send-client-subnet', 'client-subnet-zone' or 'client-subnet-always-forward' options is used. Resolvers supporting ECS need to segregate outgoing queries to accommodate for different outgoing ECS information. This re-opens up resolvers to a birthday paradox attack (Rebirthday Attack) that tries to match the DNS transaction ID in order to cache non-ECS poisonous replies.
Source: CVE Program · Revision 8b16575c39f1e1810c5e863010da073d2d3285e7