Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4: RHSA-2009:1180-01 Important: BIND DoS Fix

The Berkeley Internet Name Domain (BIND) is an implementation of the Domain Name System (DNS) protocols. BIND includes a DNS server (named); a resolver library (routines for applications to use when interfacing with DNS); and tools for verifying that the DNS server is operating correctly.
A flaw was found in the way BIND handles dynamic update message packets containing the "ANY" record type. A remote attacker could use this flaw to send a specially-crafted dynamic update packet that could cause named to exit with an assertion failure. (CVE-2009-0696)
Note: even if named is not configured for dynamic updates, receiving such a specially-crafted dynamic update packet could still cause named to exit unexpectedly.
This update also fixes the following bug:
* when running on a system receiving a large number of (greater than 4,000) DNS requests per second, the named DNS nameserver became unresponsive, and the named service had to be restarted in order for it to continue serving requests. This was caused by a deadlock occurring between two threads that led to the inability of named to continue to service requests. This deadlock has been resolved with these updated packages so that named no longer becomes unresponsive under heavy load. (BZ#512668)
All BIND users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to resolve these issues. After installing the update, the BIND daemon (named) will be restarted automatically.