CVE-2025-31498

A flaw was found in c-ares. This vulnerability allows a remote or local attacker to cause a use-after-free, potentially leading to application-level denial of service or other unexpected behavior via manipulation of DNS responses or network conditions during query processing.

This vulnerability is rated as moderate severity rather than important because successful exploitation requires a complex and unlikely set of conditions. While it is a use-after-free bug—typically a serious issue—the ability to trigger it remotely is largely theoretical. An attacker would need to control an upstream DNS server and simultaneously flood the target with ICMP UNREACHABLE packets to influence network behavior precisely, a scenario that is difficult to achieve in practice. Additionally, local exploitation depends on manipulating low-level socket behavior to induce send() or write() failures, which also requires elevated system influence or specific environmental conditions.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.

Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base or stability.