IMAP and ManageSieve protocol parsers do not properly handle NUL byte when scanning data in quoted strings, leading to out of bounds heap memory writes.

Last updated 2 June 2026

In Dovecot before 2.2.36.3 and 2.3.x before 2.3.5.1, a local attacker can cause a buffer overflow in the indexer-worker process, which can be used to elevate to root. This occurs because of missing checks in the fts and pop3-uidl components.

An issue was discovered in the auth component in Dovecot 2.2 and 2.3 before 2.3.20. When two passdb configuration entries exist with the same driver and args settings, incorrect usernamefilter and mechanism settings can be applied to passdb definitions. These incorrectly applied settings can lead to an unintended security configuration and can permit privilege escalation in certain configurations. The documentation does not advise against the use of passdb definitions that have the same driver and args settings. One such configuration would be where an administrator wishes to use the same PAM configuration or passwd file for both normal and master users but use the usernamefilter setting to restrict which of the users is able to be a master user.

Dovecot SQL based authentication can be bypassed when authusernamechars is cleared by admin. This vulnerability allows bypassing authentication for any user and user enumeration. Do not clear authusernamechars. If this is not possible, install latest fixed version. No publicly available exploits are known.

lib-smtp in submission-login and lmtp in Dovecot 2.3.9 before 2.3.9.3 mishandles truncated UTF-8 data in command parameters, as demonstrated by the unauthenticated triggering of a submission-login infinite loop.

It was discovered that Dovecot before versions 2.2.36.1 and 2.3.4.1 incorrectly handled client certificates. A remote attacker in possession of a valid certificate with an empty username field could possibly use this issue to impersonate other users.

Sending "NOOP (((...)))" command with 4000 parenthesis open+close results in ~1MB extra memory usage. Longer commands will result in client disconnection. This 1 MB can be left allocated for longer time periods by not sending the command ending LF. So attacker could connect possibly from even a single IP and create 1000 connections to allocate 1 GB of memory, which would likely result in reaching VSZ limit and killing the process and its other proxied connections. Attacker could connect possibly from even a single IP and create 1000 connections to allocate 1 GB of memory, which would likely result in reaching VSZ limit and killing the process and its other proxied connections. Install fixed version, there is no other remediation. No publicly available exploits are known.

Attacker can send a specifically crafted message before authentication that causes managesieve to allocate large amount of memory. Attacker can force managesieve-login to be unavailable by repeatedly crashing the process. Protect access to managesieve protocol, or install fixed version. No publicly available exploits are known.

ManageSieve AUTHENTICATE command crashes when using literal as SASL initial response. This can be used to crash ManageSieve service repeatedly, making it unavailable for other users. Control access to ManageSieve port, or disable the service if it's not needed. Alternatively upgrade to a fixed version. No publicly available exploits are known.

When sending invalid base64 SASL data, login process is disconnected from the auth server, causing all active authentication sessions to fail. Invalid BASE64 data can be used to DoS a vulnerable server to break concurrent logins. Install fixed version or disable concurrency in login processes (heavy perfomance penalty on large deployments). No publicly available exploits are known.

An attacker can cause uncontrolled memory usage with excessive bracing over IMAP. The fix in CVE-2026-27857 was incomplete, only blocking one way of doing this, so there was still another way left open. In particular, the fix was for closing braces, but you could still use open braces to bypass the limit. Using excessive bracing, attacker can cause memory usage up to configured memory limit. Install fixed version, or configure vszlimit for imap process to low value. No publicly available exploits are known.

An unauthenticated attacker can crash the ManageSieve login process by sending a small malformed command before authenticating. If running in high-security mode (default for community releases), only the attacker's own connection is terminated. If running 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. Restrict network access to the ManageSieve service to trusted clients. 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.

A flaw was found in dovecot 2.0 up to 2.2.33 and 2.3.0. A abort of SASL authentication results in a memory leak in Dovecot 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.

Upstream patch:

https://github.com/dovecot/core/commit/1a29ed2f96da1be22fa5a4d96c7583aa81b8b060.patch

https://github.com/dovecot/core/commit/a9b135760aea6d1790d447d351c56b78889dac22.patch

In Dovecot before 2.3.11.3, sending a specially formatted RPA request will crash the auth service because a length of zero is mishandled.

In Dovecot before 2.3.11.3, sending a specially formatted NTLM request will crash the auth service because of an out-of-bounds read.

In Dovecot before 2.3.11.3, uncontrolled recursion in submission, lmtp, and lda allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (resource consumption) via a crafted e-mail message with deeply nested MIME parts.

In Dovecot before 2.3.10.1, unauthenticated sending of malformed parameters to a NOOP command causes a NULL Pointer Dereference and crash in submission-login, submission, or lmtp.

Dovecot before 2.3.15 allows ../ Path Traversal. An attacker with access to the local filesystem can trick OAuth2 authentication into using an HS256 validation key from an attacker-controlled location. This occurs during use of local JWT validation with the posix fs driver.

Dovecot before 2.3.13 has Improper Input Validation in lda, lmtp, and imap, leading to an application crash via a crafted email message with certain choices for ten thousand MIME parts.

Multiple stack-based buffer overflows in the Sieve plugin in Dovecot 1.0 before 1.0.4 and 1.1 before 1.1.7, as derived from Cyrus libsieve, allow context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) and possibly execute arbitrary code via a crafted SIEVE script, as demonstrated by forwarding an e-mail message to a large number of recipients, a different vulnerability than CVE-2009-2632.

Dovecot before version 2.2.29 is vulnerable to a denial of service. When 'dict' passdb and userdb were used for user authentication, the username sent by the IMAP/POP3 client was sent through varexpand() to perform %variable expansion. Sending specially crafted %variable fields could result in excessive memory usage causing the process to crash (and restart), or excessive CPU usage causing all authentications to hang.

The ACL plugin in Dovecot before 1.1.4 treats negative access rights as if they are positive access rights, which allows attackers to bypass intended access restrictions.

In the IMAP Server in Dovecot 2.3.3 through 2.3.5.2, the submission-login service crashes when the client disconnects prematurely during the AUTH command.

In the IMAP Server in Dovecot 2.3.3 through 2.3.5.2, the submission-login component crashes if AUTH PLAIN is attempted over a TLS secured channel with an unacceptable authentication message.

The JSON encoder in Dovecot before 2.3.5.2 allows attackers to repeatedly crash the authentication service by attempting to authenticate with an invalid UTF-8 sequence as the username.

When cache is enabled, some passdb/userdb drivers incorrectly cache all users with same cache key, causing wrong cached information to be used for these users. After cached login, all subsequent logins are for same user. Install fixed version or disable caching either globally or for the impacted passdb/userdb drivers. No publicly available exploits are known.

Doveadm credentials are verified using direct comparison which is susceptible to timing oracle attack. An attacker can use this to determine the configured credentials. Figuring out the credential will lead into full access to the affected component. Limit access to the doveadm http service port, install fixed version. No publicly available exploits are known.

A specially crafted email delivered over SMTP and passed on to Dovecot by MTA can trigger an out of bounds read resulting in potential sensitive information disclosure and denial of service. In order to trigger this vulnerability, an attacker needs to send a specially crafted email message to the server.