Bug 2305909 (CVE-2024-23184) - CVE-2024-23184 dovecot: using a large number of address headers may trigger a denial of service
Summary: CVE-2024-23184 dovecot: using a large number of address headers may trigger a...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: CVE-2024-23184
Product: Security Response
Classification: Other
Component: vulnerability
Version: unspecified
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Product Security DevOps Team
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On: 2305911
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2024-08-19 20:45 UTC by Robb Gatica
Modified: 2024-09-24 02:48 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:
A flaw was found in Dovecot. Processing a large number of address headers (From, To, Cc, Bcc, etc) can be excessively CPU intensive. This flaw allows a remote attacker to trigger a denial of service.
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Embargoed:


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Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Product Errata RHSA-2024:6465 0 None None None 2024-09-09 01:29:07 UTC
Red Hat Product Errata RHSA-2024:6529 0 None None None 2024-09-10 11:38:55 UTC
Red Hat Product Errata RHSA-2024:6973 0 None None None 2024-09-24 02:48:46 UTC

Description Robb Gatica 2024-08-19 20:45:39 UTC
Vulnerability Details:
Having a large number of address headers (From, To, Cc, Bcc, etc.) becomes excessively CPU intensive. With 100k header lines CPU usage is already 12 seconds, and in a production environment we observed 500k header lines taking 18 minutes to parse. Since this can be triggered by external actors sending emails to a victim, this is a security issue.

The main problem is that each header line's address is added to the end of a linked list. This is done by walking the whole linked list, which becomes more inefficient the more addresses there are.

Workaround:
One can implement restrictions on address headers on MTA component preceding Dovecot.

Fix:
Install non-vulnerable version of Dovecot. Patch can be found at https://github.com/dovecot/core/compare/8e4c42d%5E...1481c04.patch

Comment 1 errata-xmlrpc 2024-09-09 01:29:06 UTC
This issue has been addressed in the following products:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2 Extended Update Support

Via RHSA-2024:6465 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:6465

Comment 2 errata-xmlrpc 2024-09-10 11:38:54 UTC
This issue has been addressed in the following products:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9

Via RHSA-2024:6529 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:6529

Comment 3 errata-xmlrpc 2024-09-24 02:48:45 UTC
This issue has been addressed in the following products:

  Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Via RHSA-2024:6973 https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2024:6973


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