Kea

Sending a maliciously crafted message to the kea-ctrl-agent, kea-dhcp-ddns, kea-dhcp4, or kea-dhcp6 daemons over any configured API socket or HA listener can cause the receiving daemon to exit with a stack overflow error. This issue affects Kea versions 2.6.0 through 2.6.4 and 3.0.0 through 3.0.2.

Published: 2026-03-25T08:46:48.992Z
Updated: 2026-03-25T17:22:19.777Z

If a DHCPv4 client sends a request with some specific options, and Kea fails to find an appropriate subnet for the client, the `kea-dhcp4` process will abort with an assertion failure. This happens only if the client request is unicast directly to Kea; broadcast messages do not cause the problem. This issue affects Kea versions 2.7.1 through 2.7.9, 3.0.0, and 3.1.0.

Published: 2025-08-27T20:23:29.489Z
Updated: 2025-11-04T21:10:15.428Z

In some cases, Kea log files or lease files may be world-readable. This issue affects Kea versions 2.4.0 through 2.4.1, 2.6.0 through 2.6.2, and 2.7.0 through 2.7.8.

Published: 2025-05-28T17:08:20.769Z
Updated: 2025-05-28T17:28:58.513Z

Kea configuration and API directives can be used to overwrite arbitrary files, subject to permissions granted to Kea. Many common configurations run Kea as root, leave the API entry points unsecured by default, and/or place the control sockets in insecure paths. This issue affects Kea versions 2.4.0 through 2.4.1, 2.6.0 through 2.6.2, and 2.7.0 through 2.7.8.

Published: 2025-05-28T17:08:11.180Z
Updated: 2025-05-28T17:23:22.213Z

Kea configuration and API directives can be used to load a malicious hook library. Many common configurations run Kea as root, leave the API entry points unsecured by default, and/or place the control sockets in insecure paths. This issue affects Kea versions 2.4.0 through 2.4.1, 2.6.0 through 2.6.2, and 2.7.0 through 2.7.8.

Published: 2025-05-28T17:03:34.499Z
Updated: 2025-05-28T17:33:50.355Z

To trigger the issue, three configuration parameters must have specific settings: "hostname-char-set" must be left at the default setting, which is "[^A-Za-z0-9.-]"; "hostname-char-replacement" must be empty (the default); and "ddns-qualifying-suffix" must *NOT* be empty (the default is empty). DDNS updates do not need to be enabled for this issue to manifest. A client that sends certain option content would then cause kea-dhcp4 to exit unexpectedly. This issue affects Kea versions 3.0.1 through 3.0.1 and 3.1.1 through 3.1.2.

Published: 2025-10-29T18:02:39.421Z
Updated: 2025-11-04T21:09:09.184Z

A missing check on incoming client requests can be exploited to cause a situation where the Kea server's lease storage contains leases which are rejected as invalid when the server tries to load leases from storage on restart. If the number of such leases exceeds a hard-coded limit in the Kea code, a server trying to restart will conclude that there is a problem with its lease store and give up. Versions affected: 1.4.0 to 1.5.0, 1.6.0-beta1, and 1.6.0-beta2

Published: 2019-10-16T17:22:16.767Z
Updated: 2024-09-16T22:19:36.160Z

An invalid hostname option can trigger an assertion failure in the Kea DHCPv4 server process (kea-dhcp4), causing the server process to exit. Versions affected: 1.4.0 to 1.5.0, 1.6.0-beta1, and 1.6.0-beta2.

Published: 2019-10-16T17:22:16.730Z
Updated: 2024-09-16T22:30:41.265Z

A packet containing a malformed DUID can cause the Kea DHCPv6 server process (kea-dhcp6) to exit due to an assertion failure. Versions affected: 1.4.0 to 1.5.0, 1.6.0-beta1, and 1.6.0-beta2.

Published: 2019-10-16T17:22:16.689Z
Updated: 2024-09-17T03:58:54.278Z