🛡️ CVE-2024-23185 on Debian — dovecot

⚪ Unknown ✅ No Known Exploit OSV
N/A
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

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.

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2024-23185 as tracked by Debian, for the package dovecot. The fix is available in version 1:2.3.21.1+dfsg1-1; earlier versions remain affected.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality none, integrity none, availability high.

Weakness class

DEBIAN-CVE-2024-23185 is classified as CWE-770: Allocation of Resources Without Limits. Resources are allocated on request with no cap, so a client can exhaust them.

Affected software

DEBIAN-CVE-2024-23185 is recorded against 1 package.

  • dovecot (fixed in 1:2.3.21.1+dfsg1-1)

Timeline and source

Published on 10 September 2024 and last revised on 4 August 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

security-tracker.debian.org (Advisory)

CVE-2024-23185 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Details

Severity Unknown
CVSS Score N/A
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2024-09-10
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-08-04
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
dovecot — 1:2.3.21.1+dfsg1-1

Site Security Check

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