Denial of service in Dovecot

1) Memory leak

EUVDB-ID: #VU10346

Risk: Medium

CVSSv3.1: 6.5 [CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H/E:U/RL:O/RC:C]

CVE-ID: CVE-2017-15132

CWE-ID: CWE-401 - Missing release of memory after effective lifetime

Exploit availability: No

Description

The vulnerability allows a remote attacker to cause DoS condition on the target system.

The weakness exists due to improper memory handling when the software aborts a Simple Authentication and Security Layer (SASL) authentication process. A remote attacker can reuse log-in processes to trigger a memory leak, consume excessive amounts of memory resources and cause the service to crash.

Mitigation

Install update from vendor's website.

Vulnerable software versions

Dovecot: 2.0.0 - 2.3.0

External links

http://github.com/dovecot/core/commit/1a29ed2f96da1be22fa5a4d96c7583aa81b8b060.patch

Q & A

Can this vulnerability be exploited remotely?

Yes. This vulnerability can be exploited by a remote non-authenticated attacker via the Internet.

How the attacker can exploit this vulnerability?

The attacker would have to send a specially crafted request to the affected application in order to exploit this vulnerability.

Is there known malware, which exploits this vulnerability?

No. We are not aware of malware exploiting this vulnerability.