DNS Validation Issue in Hickory DNS Product by Hickory Networks

CVE-2026-123579

What is CVE-2026-123579?

The Hickory DNS product has a vulnerability where its DNSSEC validation fails to correctly differentiate between NODATA responses and wildcard-expanded positive responses. This issue arises especially in queries that should yield a NODATA response due to the presence of wildcard records. An attacker could exploit this weakness by crafting a response that combines an NSEC3 record corresponding to the query name with a signed wildcard record, thus creating a false positive response that the system erroneously accepts.

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