Dovecot vulnerabilities

An attacker that holds an OAuth2 token granting only part of the required scopes can authenticate, because when more than one scope is required in the configuration, the remote token validation paths accept a token that carries only one of them, while the local token validation path correctly requires all of them. The configured authorization policy is not enforced, so a token that was granted only part of the required permissions is accepted where it should have been rejected. Use local token validation where tokens can be validated locally. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An unauthenticated attacker can send a truncated quoted argument to the ManageSieve login process, which makes it spin in an infinite loop consuming CPU. This can cause degradation or denial of service for Sieve script management, and repeated connections can consume all available CPU on the server. Monitor system for abnormal CPU usage and kill the offending process. Restrict network access to the ManageSieve service to trusted clients. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker that can send mail to a user can craft a message header whose values are chosen to collide in an internal hash table, which makes the IMAP THREAD command consume CPU disproportionate to the size of the message. This is a separate issue from CVE-2026-40014 and is not addressed by that fix. Whenever a mail client issues a THREAD command on the affected mailbox, this can cause degradation or denial of service for IMAP. Monitor system for abnormal CPU usage, kill the offending process and remove the offending message from the affected mailbox. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker that has valid credentials can open many connections to the imap-hibernate service and send invalid commands, which can intermittently cause an out-of-bounds read and crash the process. The crash interrupts hibernated IMAP sessions handled by the affected process, which can cause degradation of service for IMAP. Disable IMAP hibernation. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker that holds a token intended for a different purpose can authenticate, because when an OAuth2 token response does not contain a scope claim, the audience claim is used in its place and checked against the configured required scopes. These are different concepts, and the audience claim does not describe what a token is allowed to do. A token that grants no relevant permissions can be accepted because its intended recipient value happens to match a configured scope name, granting access that should have been denied. It also hides an identity provider misconfiguration where scopes are not being issued at all. Ensure the identity provider issues a scope claim for all tokens used with Dovecot, and that configured scope names do not match audience values. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker with valid credentials can select a compression algorithm for the IMAP connection whose decompression state requires a large amount of memory, and open several such connections. The memory limit of the process is reached with only a few connections, terminating the process and all connections it handles, which can cause degradation or denial of service for IMAP. Disable IMAP compression or limit the number of connections handled by a single imap-login process, though this has a performance impact. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

A host listed as a trusted proxy can send forwarding information containing a NUL byte, which crashes the login process on the following login attempt. The login process is terminated, which can cause degradation or denial of service for logins. Deployments that do not configure trusted proxies are not affected. Restrict the list of trusted proxy networks to hosts that are fully under your control. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

The comparison used for the doveadm password and API key is not fully timing safe and can reveal the length of the configured secret. An attacker with access to the same network as the doveadm service, able to make repeated requests and measure response timing accurately, can learn the length of the secret, which reduces the effort needed to guess it. The secret value itself is not disclosed. Restrict network access to the doveadm service to trusted clients. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker with valid credentials can send an invalid IMAP URLFETCH command, which causes uninitialized memory to be included in the error response returned to the client. Process memory contents can be disclosed to the client, which may include sensitive data. Disable the IMAP URLAUTH functionality. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An unauthenticated attacker can send an IMAP ID command with a very large number of parameters before logging in, which causes memory and CPU usage to grow disproportionately. The login process can be terminated by the out-of-memory handling, which also terminates all other connections handled by the same process. This can cause degradation or denial of service for IMAP logins. Limit the number of connections handled by a single imap-login process. This has a performance impact though. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

Forwarding information received from a host listed as a trusted proxy is not kept separate from Dovecot's own authentication fields, so a value sent by that host can be injected as an internal authentication field. Any host permitted to act as a trusted proxy can authenticate as any user without knowing that user's password. This affects deployments whose password database honours a field that permits authentication without a password. Deployments that do not configure trusted proxies are not affected. Restrict the list of trusted proxy networks to hosts that are fully under your control. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker can send a user a message with a specially crafted header that causes the IMAP THREAD command to consume CPU disproportionate to the message size. When a mail client issues a THREAD command on the affected mailbox, this can cause degradation or denial of service for IMAP. Monitor system for abnormal CPU usage, kill the offending process and remove the offending message from the affected mailbox. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker with valid credentials can submit a Sieve script containing an extreme numeric literal, which causes an out-of-bounds write when the ManageSieve service compiles the script. This causes memory corruption and an observed crash of the ManageSieve process, resulting in denial of service for script management. This might be able to be used for remote code execution. Disable the ManageSieve service if users do not need remote Sieve script management. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker with valid credentials can use the IMAP LIST command to consume CPU. This can cause degradation or denial of service for IMAP. Monitor system for abnormal CPU usage and kill the offending process and lock account. Alternatively install fixed version. No publicly available exploits are known.

Mail content stored by a user can be crafted so that it is interpreted as dsync protocol commands when an administrator later runs dsync with the stream protocol, for example during a migration. Injected commands can modify mailbox state on the destination during migration or replication, including internal mailbox attributes that a user should not be able to set directly. It can also cause dsync errors. Avoid running dsync with the stream protocol on mailboxes with untrusted content. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An unauthenticated attacker can crash the ManageSieve login process by sending a small malformed command before authenticating. In high-security mode (default for community releases), only the attacker's own connection is terminated. In high-performance mode (default for Pro releases), all connections handled by the same managesieve-login process are terminated. Repeating the attack can cause denial of service for Sieve script management.

An attacker that can get Dovecot to relay a message, for example through Sieve redirect or submission relay, can use a crafted line ending in the message body to bypass the outbound protection that prevents message content from being interpreted as SMTP commands. A downstream mail server that hasn't yet fixed the SMTP smuggling vulnerability can be tricked into treating part of the message body as new SMTP commands, allowing injection of spoofed email. This is the same vulnerability class as CVE-2023-51764 and CVE-2023-51766. Where you control the receiving mail servers, ensure they reject bare carriage returns in message data. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

When mail_max_userip_connections is set (default 10) and reached, submission-login can crash with epoll() panic caused by file descriptor handling issues. If running in high-security mode (default for community releases), only the new submission connection gets terminated. If running in high-performance mode (default for Pro releases), all connections handled by the submission-login process will be terminated. The crashes can cause failure for user to send a message, or it can cause duplicate messages to be sent. If TLS is not used (in the backend server processing the submission), duplicate deliveries cannot happen, because the crash can only happen at AUTH stage. Limit the number of connections handled by single submission-login process. This has a performance impact though. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker that can send mail to a user can craft a message whose headers contain a very large number of email addresses or MIME parameters, which causes excessive memory usage when the message is later parsed. The message is still delivered, but reading it over IMAP can exhaust the memory limit of the process and terminate it, causing denial of service for the affected user.

The vulnerability in doveadm involves credential verification using direct comparison, which is susceptible to a timing oracle attack. An attacker can exploit this to determine the configured credentials.

A vulnerability in Dovecot allows bypassing SQL-based authentication when the auth_username_chars parameter is cleared by an administrator. An attacker can gain access to any user account and enumerate users.