A flaw was found in dovecot 2.0 up to 2.2.33 and 2.3.0. An abort of SASL authentication results in a memory leak in dovecots auth client used by login processes. The leak has impact in high performance configuration where same login processes are reused and can cause the process to crash due to memory exhaustion.
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dovecot | Dovecot | 2.0.0 (including) | 2.2.33 (including) |
| Dovecot | Dovecot | 2.3.0 (including) | 2.3.0 (including) |
| Dovecot | Ubuntu | artful | * |
| Dovecot | Ubuntu | devel | * |
| Dovecot | Ubuntu | esm-infra-legacy/trusty | * |
| Dovecot | Ubuntu | esm-infra/xenial | * |
| Dovecot | Ubuntu | trusty | * |
| Dovecot | Ubuntu | trusty/esm | * |
| Dovecot | Ubuntu | xenial | * |
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either:
The first of these solutions is an issue in itself though, since it may allow attackers to prevent the use of the system by a particular valid user. If the attacker impersonates the valid user, they may be able to prevent the user from accessing the server in question.
The second solution is simply difficult to effectively institute – and even when properly done, it does not provide a full solution. It simply makes the attack require more resources on the part of the attacker.