CVE-2026-39849
Published:May 05, 2026
Updated:August 06, 2026
Pi-hole FTL is the core engine of the Pi-hole network-level advertisement and tracker blocker. In versions before 6.6.1, the "dns.interface" configuration field in Pi-hole FTL accepted newline characters without validation, allowing an attacker to inject arbitrary directives into the generated dnsmasq configuration file. On installations with no admin password set (the default for many deployments), the configuration API is fully accessible without credentials, allowing a network-adjacent attacker to inject the payload, enable the built-in DHCP server, and achieve arbitrary command execution on the host the next time any device on the network requests a DHCP lease. The injected value is persisted to /etc/pihole/pihole.toml and survives restarts. The strncpy in the code path limits the total interface field to 31 bytes, but payloads such as wlan0\ndhcp-script=/tmp/p fit within this constraint. The dnsmasq config validation introduced in FTL 6.6 only checks syntactic validity, so valid directives injected via newline pass validation successfully. This issue has been fixed in version 6.6.1.
Affected Packages
https://github.com/pi-hole/FTL.git (GITHUB):
Affected version(s) >=v1.0 <v6.6.1Fix Suggestion:
Update to version v6.6.1Related Resources (5)
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Contact UsCVSS v4
Base Score:
8.7
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Attack Requirements
NONE
Privileges Required
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Vulnerable System Confidentiality
HIGH
Vulnerable System Integrity
HIGH
Vulnerable System Availability
HIGH
Subsequent System Confidentiality
NONE
Subsequent System Integrity
NONE
Subsequent System Availability
NONE
CVSS v3
Base Score:
8.8
Attack Vector
NETWORK
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Weakness Type (CWE)
Improper Neutralization of CRLF Sequences ('CRLF Injection')
EPSS
Base Score:
0.96