Software Update: PowerDNS Recursor 3.1.7.2

PowerDNS is a dns server with a database as backend, which makes it easy to manage a large number of dns entries. In late April 2006, the developers decided to release the two parts that make up PowerDNS, a recursor and an authoritative name server, separately. This allows a new version to be released faster, according to the developers. The developers have just released version 3.1.7.2 of PowerDNS Recursor to fix security vulnerabilities. Everyone is therefore advised to perform this update urgently. The announcement of this release looks like this:

Critical PowerDNS Recursor Security Vulnerabilities: please upgrade ASAP to 3.1.7.2

Dear PowerDNS Users,

Two major vulnerabilities have recently been discovered in the PowerDNS Recursor (all versions up to and including 3.1.7.1). Over the past two weeks, these vulnerabilities have been addressed, resulting in PowerDNS Recursor 3.1.7.2.

Given the nature and magnitude of these vulnerabilities, ALL PowerDNS RECURSOR USERS ARE URGED TO UPGRADE AT THEIR EARLIEST CONVENIENCE. No versions of the PowerDNS Authoritative Server are affected.

PowerDNS Recursor 3.1.7.2 as been thoroughly tested, and has in fact been in production for a week at some major sites already. No problems have been reported. 3.1.7.2 does not include anything other than security updates.

The two major vulnerabilities can lead to a FULL SYSTEM COMPROMISE, as well as cache poisoning, connecting your users to possibly malicious IP addresses.

These vulnerabilities were discovered by a third party that for now prefers not to be named. PowerDNS is however very grateful for their help. More details are available on:
http://doc.powerdns.com/powerdns-advisory-2010-01.html
http://doc.powerdns.com/powerdns-advisory-2010-02.html

Debian, FreeBSD, Gentoo and SuSE are processing the changed packages, and will be releasing security updates shortly. Ubuntu does not provide security updates for PowerDNS, so Ubuntu users must take immediate action and download our packages.

Source code is available here:
http://downloads.powerdns.com/releases/pdns-recursor-3.1.7.2.tar.bz2

Special upgrade option of last resort (old systems):

In addition, as a special service, we are also providing two precompiled fully static Linux binaries as an ‘upgrade option of last resort’:
http://downloads.powerdns.com/releases/pdns_recursor-3.1.7.2.amd64.static.executable
http://downloads.powerdns.com/releases/pdns_recursor-3.1.7.2.i386.static.executable

These two binaries are suitable of our .deb or .rpm files somehow refuse to load (which happens on RHEL version 3, for example).

Download the appropriate executable, rename to pdns_recursor, set the executable bit (chmod a+x pdns_recursor), and ‘mv’ the executable over /usr/sbin/pdns_recursor.

If you need any help in upgrading, please do not hesitate to contact us.