GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Go
GHSA-2wpx-qpw2-g5h5 CoreDNS' DoQ worker pool does not bound stream backlog
HIGH
Official page ↗
- Aliases
- CVE-2026-32934
- Ecosystem
- Go
- Packages
- github.com/coredns/coredns
- Severity
- High
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- Weaknesses
- CWE-770
- Reviewed
- 2026-04-28
Affected packages
• Go github.com/coredns/coredns: < 1.14.3 → fixed in 1.14.3
Description
Summary
CoreDNS' DNS-over-QUIC (DoQ) server can be driven into large goroutine and memory growth by a remote client that opens many QUIC streams and stalls after sending only 1 byte. Even with a small configured quic { worker_pool_size ... }, CoreDNS still spawns a goroutine per accepted stream (workers + waiters) and active workers can block indefinitely in io.ReadFull() with no per-stream read deadline, enabling unauthenticated remote DoS via memory exhaustion/OOM-kill.
Details
CoreDNS' DoQ server uses a global worker pool (streamProcessPool) to limit concurrent stream processing, but when the pool is full it still spawns a goroutine per accepted stream that waits to acquire a worker token: select { case s.streamProcessPool <- ...: go ...; default: go ... wait for token ... } (core/dnsserver/server_quic.go)
Additionally, the DoQ message framing reads are blocking io.ReadFull() calls with no per-stream read deadline: readDOQMessage() reads the 2-byte length prefix and message body via io.ReadFull() (core/dnsserver/server_quic.go)
This allows an attacker to pin all workers by sending 1 byte (so io.ReadFull() blocks waiting for the second byte of the DoQ length prefix), while also creating an unbounded backlog of goroutines waiting for a worker token.
Note: this appears to be a result of an incomplete fix/regression for CVE-2025-47950 (GHSA-cvx7-x8pj-x2gw).
PoC
1. Adjust COREDNS_BIN in the PoC to point at right path (see the top-level const definitions for tunables as well)
2. Run python3 ./doq-dos-repro.py
3. Expected sample output:
• Start CoreDNS *
Corefile: /tmp/vh-f003-doq-mem-regression/Corefile
Log: /tmp/vh-f003-doq-mem-regression/coredns.log
• Baseline sample (idle) *
rss_kib=49380 go_goroutines=17
• Build + run partial-stream flooder *
go: downloading golang.org/x/net v0.43.0
go: downloading golang.org/x/crypto v0.41.0
go: downloading go.uber.org/mock v0.5.2
go: downloading github.com/stretchr/testify v1.11.1
go: downloading golang.org/x/sys v0.35.0
go: downloading github.com/pmezard/go-difflib v1.0.0
go: downloading github.com/davecgh/go-spew v1.1.1
go: downloading gopkg.in/yaml.v3 v3.0.1
• Candidate sample (during attack) *
rss_kib=137968 go_goroutines=15557
• Flooder output *
opened conns=60 streams_per_conn=256 total_streams=15360
• Wrote results *
/tmp/vh-f003-doq-mem-regression/results.json
• OK *
DoQ flood caused goroutine/RSS growth despite worker_pool_size.
Impact
Unauthenticated remote DoS on an encrypted DNS transport via goroutine/RSS growth leading to OOM-kill/crash and service outage.
Related
Alias · CVE (1)
- CVE-2026-32934 CoreDNS is a DNS server that chains plugins. vulnerability
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-770 Allocation of Resources Without Limits or Throttling weakness
References
- https://github.com/coredns/coredns/security/advisories/GHSA-2wpx-qpw2-g5h5 web
- https://github.com/coredns/coredns/security/advisories/GHSA-cvx7-x8pj-x2gw web
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-32934 advisory
- https://github.com/coredns/coredns package
- https://github.com/coredns/coredns/releases/tag/v1.14.3 web