🛡️ SUSE-SU-2021:2891-1 — dovecot23 (CVE-2021-29157 +2 more)

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

Description

Security update for dovecot23

This update for dovecot23 fixes the following issues:

Update dovecot to version 2.3.15 (jsc#SLE-19970):

Security issues fixed:

  • CVE-2021-29157: Dovecot does not correctly escape kid and azp fields in

JWT tokens. This may be used to supply attacker controlled keys to

validate tokens, if attacker has local access. (bsc#1187418)

Local attacker can login as any user and access their emails

  • CVE-2021-33515: On-path attacker could have injected plaintext commands

before STARTTLS negotiation that would be executed after STARTTLS

finished with the client. (bsc#1187419)

Attacker can potentially steal user credentials and mails

  • Disconnection log messages are now more standardized across services.

They also always now start with 'Disconnected' prefix.

  • Dovecot now depends on libsystemd for systemd integration.
  • Removed support for Lua 5.2. Use version 5.1 or 5.3 instead.
  • config: Some settings are now marked as 'hidden'. It's discouraged to

change these settings. They will no longer be visible in doveconf

output, except if they have been changed or if doveconf -s parameter

is used. See https://doc.dovecot.org/settings/advanced/ for details.

  • imap-compress: Compression level is now algorithm specific.

See https://doc.dovecot.org/settings/plugin/compress-plugin/

  • indexer-worker: Convert 'Indexed' info logs to an event named

'indexer_worker_indexing_finished'. See

https://doc.dovecot.org/admin_manual/list_of_events/#indexer-worker-indexing-finished

+ Add TSLv1.3 support to min_protocols.

+ Allow configuring ssl_cipher_suites. (for TLSv1.3+)

+ acl: Add acl_ignore_namespace setting which allows to entirely ignore

ACLs for the listed namespaces.

+ imap: Support official RFC8970 preview/snippet syntax. Old methods of

retrieving preview information via IMAP commands ('SNIPPET and PREVIEW

with explicit algorithm selection') have been deprecated.

+ imapc: Support INDEXPVT for imapc storage to enable private

message flags for cluster wide shared mailboxes.

+ lib-storage: Add new events: mail_opened, mail_expunge_requested,

mail_expunged, mail_cache_lookup_finished. See

https://doc.dovecot.org/admin_manual/list_of_events/#mail

+ zlib, imap-compression, fs-compress: Support compression levels that

the algorithm supports. Before, we would allow hardcoded value between

1 to 9 and would default to 6. Now we allow using per-algorithm value

range and default to whatever default the algorithm specifies.

  • *-login: Commands pipelined together with and just after the authenticate

command cause these commands to be executed twice. This applies to all

protocols that involve user login, which currently comprises of imap,

pop3, submisision and managesieve.

  • *-login: Processes are supposed to disconnect the oldest non-logged in

connection when process_limit was reached. This didn't actually happen

with the default 'high-security mode' (with service_count=1) where each

connection is handled by a separate process.

  • *-login: When login process reaches client/process limits, oldest

client connections are disconnected. If one of these was still doing

anvil lookup, this caused a crash. This could happen only if the login

process limits were very low or if the server was overloaded.

  • Fixed building with link time optimizations (-flto).
  • auth: Userdb iteration with passwd driver does not always return all

users with some nss drivers.

  • dsync: Shared INBOX not synced when 'mail_shared_explicit_inbox' was

disabled. If a user has a shared mailbox which is another user's INBOX,

dsync didn't include the mailbox in syncing unless explicit naming is

enabled with 'mail_shared_explicit_inbox' set to 'yes'.

  • dsync: Shared namespaces were not synced with '-n' flag.
  • dsync: Syncing shared INBOX failed if mail_attribute_dict was not set.

If a user has a shared mailbox that is another user's INBOX, dsync

failed to export the mailbox if mail attributes are disabled.

  • fts-solr, fts-tika: Using both Solr FTS and Tika may have caused HTTP

requests to assert-crash: Panic: file http-client-request.c: line 1232

(http_client_request_send_more): assertion failed: (req->payload_input != NULL)

  • fts-tika: 5xx errors returned by Tika server as indexing failures.

However, Tika can return 5xx for some attachments every time.

So the 5xx error should be retried once, but treated as success if it

happens on the retry as well. v2.3 regression.

  • fts-tika: v2.3.11 regression: Indexing messages with fts-tika may have

resulted in Panic: file message-parser.c: line 802 (message_parser_deinit_from_parts):

assertion failed: (ctx->nested_parts_count == 0 || i_stream_have_bytes_left(ctx->input))

  • imap: SETMETADATA could not be used to unset metadata values.

Instead NIL was handled as a 'NIL' string. v2.3.14 regression.

  • imap: IMAP BINARY FETCH crashes at least on empty base64 body:

Panic: file index-mail-binary.c: line 358 (blocks_count_lines):

Affected software

SUSE-SU-2021:2891-1 is recorded against 1 package.

  • dovecot23 (fixed in 2.3.15-27.3)

Timeline and source

Published on 31 August 2021 and last revised on 4 February 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

www.suse.com (Advisory)
bugzilla.suse.com (Report)
bugzilla.suse.com (Report)
bugzilla.suse.com (Report)
www.suse.com (Web)
www.suse.com (Web)

Details

Severity Unknown
CVSS Score N/A
CVSS Vector N/A
CWE N/A
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source OSV
Published 2021-08-31
Updated 2026-08-20
Modified 2026-02-04
Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
dovecot23 2.3.15-27.3

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