High severity · published Sep 10, 2024
CVE-2024-23185
Very large headers can cause resource exhaustion when parsing message
7.5
CVSS
1.3%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
Very large headers can cause resource exhaustion when parsing message. The message-parser normally reads reasonably sized chunks of the message. However, when it feeds them to message-header-parser, it starts building up "full_value" buffer out of the smaller chunks. The full_value buffer has no size limit, so large headers can cause large memory usage. It doesn't matter whether it's a single long header line, or a single header split into multiple lines. This bug exists in all Dovecot versions. Incoming mails typically have some size limits set by MTA, so even largest possible header size may still fit into Dovecot's vsz_limit. So attackers probably can't DoS a victim user this way. A user could APPEND larger mails though, allowing them to DoS themselves (although maybe cause some memory issues for the backend in general). One can implement restrictions on headers on MTA component preceding Dovecot. No publicly available exploits are known.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)1.3% · higher than 70% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
OD
OX Dovecot Pro · Open-Xchange GmbH
through 2.3.21 · source: vendor, CISA
Affected product
OD
OX Dovecot Pro
Open-Xchange GmbH
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