STIGUI
V-275938CAT II — Medium severitySV-275938r1156959_rule

The host running a BIND 9.x implementation must have DNS cookies enabled.

Rule version BIND-9X-002470 · STIG v3 · 2026-08-24

Discussion

DNS cookies can help prevent spoofing and cache poisoning attacks by verifying the identity of both the client and server. They do this by including a cryptographic identifier (the cookie) in DNS messages, which can be verified in future messages. This makes it difficult for an attacker to learn the cookie values and thus spoof them.

Check

Verify answer-cookie is enabled.

Inspect the named.conf file for the following:

options { answer-cookie yes;

If answer-cookie is missing or set to "no", this is a finding.

Fix

Edit the named.conf file:

    options {
       answer-cookie yes;
    };

After making changes, save the named.conf file and restart the BIND service to apply the changes.

Identifiers

Group ID
V-275938
Group title
SRG-APP-000516-DNS-000109
Rule ID
SV-275938r1156959_rule
Check ID
C-80040r1123966_chk
Fix ID
F-79945r1123967_fix