CVE-2024-23184: open-xchange gmbh ox dovecot pro

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2024-23184 is a medium (CVSS 5.0) vulnerability in open-xchange gmbh ox dovecot pro. EPSS estimates a 0.84% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 57.1% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 10-09-2024
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 04-11-2025
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

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. An external attacker can send specially crafted messages that consume target system resources and cause outage. One can implement restrictions on address headers on MTA component preceding Dovecot. No publicly available exploits are known.

• CWE-770Allocation of Resources Without Limits or ThrottlingThe product allocates a reusable resource or group of resources on behalf of an actor without imposing any intended restrictions on the size or number of resources that can be allocated.