named's configured cache size limit can be significantly exceeded

Summary

Every named instance configured to run as a recursive resolver maintains a cache database holding the responses to the queries it has recently sent to authoritative servers. The size limit for that cache database can be configured using the max-cache-size statement in the configuration file; it defaults to 90% of the total amount of memory available on the host. When the size of the cache reaches 7/8 of the configured limit, a cache-cleaning algorithm starts to remove expired and/or least-recently used RRsets from the cache, to keep memory use below the configured limit.

It has been discovered that the effectiveness of the cache-cleaning algorithm used in named can be severely diminished by querying the resolver for specific RRsets in a certain order, effectively allowing the configured max-cache-size limit to be significantly exceeded. This issue affects BIND 9 versions 9.11.0 through 9.16.41, 9.18.0 through 9.18.15, 9.19.0 through 9.19.13, 9.11.3-S1 through 9.16.41-S1, and 9.18.11-S1 through 9.18.15-S1.

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