Incorrect authorization in the COM administration API of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.4 through 6.3.6 allows an account assigned the serveradmin role with a list of domains - a credential an administrator may create meaning to confine it to those domains - to act as the whole-server administrator over COM. Administrator roles are meant to confine such a credential to the domains its list names, and the REST API did not take it for the server administrator, but the COM API's server-administrator check read the administerserver permission as the whole server whatever list the grant carried. So the credential signed in through the Control Panel, or through a script run on the server, as the server administrator of every domain: it could read and change every domain's accounts and mail, rename any domain, map a domain alias onto any, write the server's settings and secrets, and create further server-administrator accounts. The COM API's domain-administrator check, asked with no domain, likewise let an account assigned the domainadmin role with a list of domains that leaves out the account's own domain administer that domain's ordinary accounts over COM. An account holding serveradmin with no list is the server administrator by design and is unaffected, as are the help desk, auditor and custom roles.

Missing authorization in the REST and COM administration APIs of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a remote authenticated user whose credential is confined to named domains to change mail routing and domain configuration beyond those domains on a multi-tenant server. A domain administrator, an account or API key given another role that manages accounts in named domains, or a full-scope API key issued for named domains could create a domain alias for any name (so that other tenants' mail for that name is diverted to an address the attacker controls, or denied), rename a domain to any name the server does not host, set a rule's bind-to-address, send-using-route or script-function action to reach one of the server's own addresses, a configured route's stored credentials or a function of the server's event script, and set the domain's relay host - which delivery then connects to with no address rule - to an address on the server's own network; and over the COM API any account could set the three rule actions on its own rules, where the script-function action runs at delivery. The authorization gate did not refuse these routes to a confined credential and the handlers were not given the caller; over COM the domain-alias save performed no authorization check at all, the domain rename required only a domain administrator, and a rule save required at most that the caller could change the rule's owner.

Not failing securely in the anti-virus attachment-stripping action of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to have a message that the server's virus scanner found infected delivered to the recipient's mailbox unchanged. With virus scanning enabled and its action set to remove attachments and deliver the text (the default action deletes the message), the server keeps one text part of an infected message and replaces every attachment with a note. A message whose single part is not text - a program or an archive sent as the whole message, a message carried whole, a file declared an attachment, or an S/MIME message signed as one part, whose content the recipient's mail client opens - had no part the action could pick out, and was delivered as it arrived, with the content the scanner had found and nothing but a line in the application log to show it. Any sender can write such a message.

Insufficient preservation of the original sender in the forwarding of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to have mail they write, naming in its From an address at a domain the server hosts, delivered to other receivers as passing that domain's DMARC policy. When the server sent on a copy of mail that came from outside - an account's forward, a mail rule's forward, a Sieve redirect, a list's copy, or an alias or list expanding to an outside address - it could give the copy an SMTP identity in the organisation of the domain the copy's From names, whatever the message's origin: with the Sender Rewriting Scheme or the rewrite of the envelope sender on forwarding enabled (both off by default), an address at the forwarding domain; for a list, its bounce address; for a message with an empty envelope sender, none, under the server's own host name; and an envelope sender the message came with at a subdomain of a hosted domain was kept. Where that identity's SPF record authorises the server, other receivers' SPF check of the copy passed for a domain aligned with the From, and DMARC passed with it, although the message had not passed DMARC when the server received it. Exploitation needs a forward, redirect, alias or list that carries the hosted domain's mail to an outside address, and one of: SRS or the envelope rewrite enabled; a list whose bounce address is in the domain's organisation; an envelope sender at a subdomain whose SPF record authorises the server; or, for an empty envelope sender, an SPF record that authorises the server under its host name. The DKIM route to the same result is CVE-2026-107567.

Missing authorization in the REST metrics route of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.2.25 through 6.3.6 allows a remote authenticated user whose credential is confined to named domains to read the server-wide traffic history. GET /api/v1/metrics/history returns the server's traffic counters over the last 30 days; those counters are server-wide and carry no domain, which is why the report routes already refuse the same counters to a credential confined to named domains. The metrics route was not among the routes the server's authorization gate refuses a confined credential and its handler was not given the caller, so a domain administrator, an account given another role that holds viewconfiguration in named domains (the auditor role given a domain list among them), or an API key issued for named domains could read the whole server's traffic totals rather than its own domains'. The disclosure is of aggregate operational counters, not of any message or account.

Incorrect authorization in the REST administration API of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.4 through 6.3.6 allows a remote authenticated user whose credential holds the manageroles permission in named domains - a full-scope API key issued for those domains, or an account assigned the serveradmin role with a list of domains - to obtain the server administrator's authority. An account's admin level gives it authority, and a role assigned to it replaces that authority, which is how an administrator narrows an account whose admin level is the server administrator's. The route that takes a role away (DELETE /api/v1/role-assignments/{address}) checked only that the credential takes in what the account held at the time, not what it would hold afterwards, so such a credential could take a narrowing role away from an account in its domains whose admin level is the server administrator's, returning it to the server administrator's authority, and, having set that account's password while it held the narrower role, sign in as the server administrator.

Missing authorization in the REST role-management routes of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.4 through 6.3.6 allows a remote authenticated user whose credential is confined to named domains to modify a custom role that accounts in other domains hold, and to create custom roles and delete any that no account holds. The routes that create, update and delete a custom role require the manageroles permission, which only the serveradmin role holds; but a full-scope API key issued for named domains, and serveradmin assigned with a domain list, are serveradmin confined to those domains and hold manageroles. The server's authorization gate did not refuse the three role routes to a confined credential and the route named no domain, so a credential issued to one tenant could raise or lower the permissions of a custom role assigned across other tenants - granting another domain's role every permission over its mailboxes and settings, or removing what it needs. A custom role may not hold administerserver, administerdomain or manageroles, so the confined credential cannot make itself or another a server administrator by creating or rewriting a custom role.

Use of a less trusted source for the envelope sender in the external-account download of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to have mail they write in the name of a domain the server hosts sent on by the server with an envelope sender at that domain, so that it passes the domain's SPF and DMARC at other receivers. A message the server downloads from an external POP3 or IMAP account has no SMTP envelope of its own, and the server took the address in its From header as its envelope sender, whatever that address was. A forward or redirect of the downloaded message to an outside address then left with that address as its envelope sender, which the Sender Rewriting Scheme leaves alone for a hosted domain, so that the receiver's SPF check passed for the forged domain, aligned even under strict alignment, with no non-default setting, host name record or DMARC policy needed. An attacker needs to know a mailbox elsewhere that an account here collects and forwards to an outside address; an account holder who adds an external account of their own can collect from a server of their own, which matters where SmtpAuthenticatedSenderCheck holds signed-in senders to their own addresses.

Incorrect authorization in the Sender Rewriting Scheme (SRS) of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.2.1 through 6.3.6 allows a remote attacker to relay mail through the server to outside addresses. With SRS enabled, the server rewrites the envelope sender of mail it forwards to a signed SRS address at the forwarding domain, and passes a bounce to that address back to the original sender; but it took every message to a valid SRS address, whatever its sender, as delivery to a local recipient, so the relay rules and the SMTP authentication they require were not applied, and the message was delivered to the outside address the SRS address encodes. Anyone holding a valid SRS address of the server, such as the recipient of a forwarded message, could have the server relay mail to the address it encodes for 21 days, and an account holder whose account forwards to an outside mailbox could obtain one for any address. SRS is off by default.

Insufficient resource pool in the ACME HTTP-01 challenge responder of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to cause a certificate issuance or renewal to fail. When the server obtains or renews a TLS certificate over ACME it runs an HTTP-01 challenge responder on port 80 for the certificate authority to read the challenge token; the responder served one connection at a time, accepting a socket, waiting up to five seconds to receive a request, answering it, and only then accepting the next. A client that connected and sent nothing held the single worker for the whole timeout, so enough idle connections during a validation keep the certificate authority's own request from being answered in time and the validation fails. Sustained across a certificate's renewals this leads to the certificate expiring, after which clients refuse the server's TLS; the mail service itself continues on its current certificate until then. No authentication is required to connect to the responder. Version 6.3.7 serves up to 64 connections at once and closes a connection past that, so that where a handful of idle connections, one after another, sufficed before, a client must keep 64 idle connections open at once throughout a validation to have the certificate authority's connection closed.

Insertion of sensitive information into a log file in the SMTP server of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a local user who can read the server's log, or anyone given a copy of it, to obtain credentials. With SMTP logging enabled, the server hid the credential of an AUTH PLAIN command only when it was sent after EHLO in one exact form, and wrote the rest of the SASL exchange as the client sent it: a PLAIN password sent before EHLO or with extra spacing, the OAuth 2.0 bearer token of AUTH XOAUTH2 and AUTH OAUTHBEARER (from 6.2.0), the SCRAM-SHA-256 client proof (from 6.2.0), which with the logged salt and iteration count allows offline password guessing, and the GSSAPI authenticator (from 6.3.2). SMTP logging is off by default; on Windows before 6.3.6 the log folder was readable by every local user.

Cross-site request forgery in the REST API of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a remote attacker to make an authenticated user's browser perform a state-changing request. The REST API accepts HTTP Basic authentication and answers a browser with a Basic sign-in box; a browser caches the credential once the box is answered and sends it with later requests to that origin, including a top-level form post from another site, and the server reads a request body whatever its declared content type. The cross-site protection covered only the cookie session (a header a cross-site form cannot set, and a SameSite=Strict cookie); HTTP Basic was not held to it. A page under an attacker's control, visited by a user whose browser holds a cached Basic credential for the REST API - typically an administrator who signed in through the box - could therefore cause a state-changing request such as creating a domain, an account or an API key, or changing a setting, with the victim's credential. The attacker cannot read the cross-origin response, so the forgery is blind.

Incorrect default permissions in the Windows installer of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allow a local authenticated user to run code as the mail server's high-privileged accounts when the product is installed in a folder whose permissions are inherited from a writable parent, such as the root of a drive. The installer places the server's programs in the Bin folder of the program folder and gives neither the program folder nor Bin any permissions of their own, so they inherit the parent's. Under the default location, Program Files, ordinary users receive only read and execute and the configuration is not affected; but the installer accepts any path without warning, and a program folder at the root of an NTFS volume inherits write access for a broad group - Authenticated Users (Modify) on a Windows client, Users (create files and folders) on Windows Server. A local user without administrator rights can then alter or replace the service program, which runs as LocalSystem or as the service's virtual account, or the programs an administrator runs elevated from Bin during setup and maintenance, or place a library in Bin that those programs load in place of the system copy, gaining code execution with those privileges. The default Program Files installation is not affected.

Unchecked input for a loop condition in Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to stop the server carrying mail. The server bounds the mail it generates in response to a message - a rule forward, reply or copy, an account forward, a Sieve redirect, vacation or notify, a bounce, an out-of-office reply - by a counter it carries in the message's X-hMailServer-LoopCount header, and makes no more once the counter reaches the configured rule loop limit (5 by default); that is what ends a forwarding or auto-reply cycle in a bounded number of hops. X-hMailServer-LoopCount is an ordinary header that is not stripped from mail arriving from outside, and the server read it with a signed conversion and no validation, so a count below zero passed every test against the limit: a sender who sets X-hMailServer-LoopCount to a negative value, or on the Linux builds to a value above the 32-bit signed range that the conversion wraps to a negative one, lifts the bound, and a message that enters a generated-mail cycle then loops up to about two thousand million times, each hop a queued message and a delivery, filling the queue and disk and stopping mail service. The Sieve notify action (from 6.2.22) consulted no limit at all, and its increment of the count could overflow a signed integer; and an account could reset the counter on its own mail through a Sieve editheader of the header (from 6.2.22) or a rule Set header value action (all versions) ahead of a forward or redirect.

Missing authorization in the Sieve editheader action (6.2.22 through 6.3.6) and in the mail-rule Set header value action (6.0.0 through 6.3.6) of Progressive Robot hMailServer allows an authenticated user to make the server send mail as any address, DKIM-signed where the address is at a domain the server signs for. A Sieve script's editheader (addheader/deleteheader) could add or delete any header field except Received and Return-Path, and the server applies a script's header edits before it queues a redirect, so the redirected copy is sent as the script left it. The server signs a message's first delivery pass as the domain named in its From header wherever it signs DKIM for that domain and the message carries no signature of it. A script could therefore delete and re-add From - another account's address, or anyone's at a hosted domain - and redirect, so the server sent the message in that name and, for a hosted domain, signed it with that domain's DKIM key, a forgery aligned to pass the domain's DMARC; or, where another sender's domain is one the server signs for, delete the DKIM-Signature that sender's message arrived with, alter a field, and redirect, so the server re-signed the altered message as that sender's domain. editheader placed no restriction on From, Sender, Resent-From, Resent-Sender or DKIM-Signature. The editheader action was introduced in 6.2.22. In the mail-rule engine, a domain's or an account's rule's Set header value action could likewise set From, Sender, Resent-From, Resent-Sender or DKIM-Signature ahead of a forward or a copy, whoever the rule belonged to, so that an account acting on its own rules over COM, a domain administrator, or an API key confined to a domain (over the REST API from 6.3.4) could have the server forward or copy a message in the name of any address, signed, where that address is at a domain the server hosts with DKIM signing enabled, with that domain's key.

Missing authorization in the Sieve notify action (6.2.22 through 6.3.6) and in the mail-rule Reply action (6.0.0 through 6.3.6) of Progressive Robot hMailServer allows an authenticated user to send mail through the server as any address. A Sieve notify sends a notification message, and its :from tag names the sender; the server set the notification's From header to that :from as the script wrote it, without checking that the address belongs to the account - the check that the Sieve vacation action applies to its own :from, and that the server applies to the sender of mail queued over COM or sent from the webmail. An account that can store a Sieve script (over ManageSieve, the REST API's self-service filter, or the administration interface) could therefore have the server send a notification from any address, on this server or anywhere; and where the claimed address is at a domain the server hosts with DKIM signing enabled, the server signed the notification with that domain's DKIM key, because it signs by the From header's domain, producing forged mail aligned to pass the domain's DMARC policy. The notify action and this behaviour were introduced in 6.2.22. In the mail-rule engine, a rule's Reply was likewise sent from whatever address the action named, whoever the rule belonged to, so that an account acting on its own rules over COM, a domain administrator, or an API key confined to a domain (over the REST API from 6.3.4) could have a domain's or an account's rule reply from any address, signed, where that address is at a domain the server hosts with DKIM signing enabled, with that domain's key.

Use of a less trusted source in the DKIM signing of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.6 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to have mail they write signed with the DKIM key of a domain the server hosts, so that it passes DKIM and DMARC for that domain at other receivers. With DKIM signing enabled for a hosted domain, the server signed every message on its first delivery pass as the domain named in its From header, before local delivery, whatever the message's origin and without checking that its sender had authenticated. A sender anywhere could therefore send the server, as ordinary inbound mail, a message whose From is any address at such a domain, and the server signed it with that domain's key. Every copy the server then sent on to an address outside carried a valid signature aligned with the forged From, whatever the domain's DMARC policy: an account's forward, a mail rule's forward or copy, a Sieve redirect, an alias or distribution list with an outside member, the mirror copy, a managed-list or journal copy, or a message released from quarantine. A signed copy can also be re-sent to other recipients while the domain's key is unchanged. Exploitation needs DKIM signing to be enabled for the hosted domain (it is off until configured) and, for the forgery to leave the server, a forward, alias, list or rule that carries the domain's mail to an outside address. The signer likewise signed a message submitted over authenticated SMTP as whatever hosted domain its From header named, a header authenticated SMTP does not hold to the submitting account, so that an account of one hosted domain could have mail written in the name of another hosted domain signed with that domain's key; this mattered where the server holds signed-in senders to their own envelope addresses (SmtpAuthenticatedSenderCheck, off by default), as the signature was then the remaining way for such mail to pass the other domain's DMARC policy.

Uncontrolled eviction in the browser session table of the REST API in Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.2.28 through 6.3.5 allows a remote authenticated user to end other users' sessions. The table of browser sessions, shared by every account, the server administrator and support sessions, dropped its least recently used session whenever it was full, whoever it belonged to, and placed no limit on how many sessions one account could hold. A user who repeatedly signs in with their own mailbox password can therefore keep the table full and sign out every webmail and administration session that is idle for more than a short time, for as long as they continue.

Uncontrolled eviction in the pending sign-in tables of the REST API in Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.4 and 6.3.5 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to make other users' OpenID Connect, SAML and passkey sign-ins fail. The routes that start a single sign-on and hand out a passkey sign-in challenge are reached without authentication and stored pending state in bounded tables that dropped their oldest entry when full, whoever had started it. An attacker who starts sign-ins a few times a second (about a hundred a second for passkeys) pushes every other user's pending sign-in out of the table before that user's browser returns, denying single sign-on and passkey sign-in for as long as the requests continue.

Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.5 fails open when applying DANE (RFC 7672) to outbound SMTP delivery. The server's validating DNSSEC resolver treated a TLSA or MX lookup that did not complete (no answer, SERVFAIL, a malformed reply), an answer without the requested records and without an NSEC/NSEC3 proof of their absence, and an answer whose records carried no applicable RRSIG as if the recipient domain were unsigned, and from 6.2.19 it also delivered to mail exchangers taken from an unvalidated MX lookup that the DNSSEC-validated MX record set did not name. An attacker who can drop, forge or strip DNS answers on the path to the server's resolver, at the resolver, or between the resolver and the recipient domain's name servers, and who holds an active position on the SMTP path, can thereby disable DANE for a DNSSEC-signed recipient domain and cause messages to be delivered in cleartext or to a host of the attacker's choosing with an arbitrary certificate, where they can be read and modified.

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the webmail's message view of the REST API in Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.2 through 6.3.5 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to make the webmail, the administration console and the REST API unavailable by sending a message. The route that renders a received message's HTML replaced each reference to an embedded image in place, with work that grew with the square of the number of references, and wrote the image out for every reference while counting it against its size limit only once. A message whose HTML refers to one small embedded image a very large number of times, opened in the webmail by its recipient, therefore keeps one of the listener's four worker threads busy for minutes and makes it build a document of gigabytes, so that a few such messages leave the HTTP listener unable to answer anybody.

Improper certificate validation in the webmail of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.2 through 6.3.5 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to have S/MIME-encrypted mail that the account later sends to another correspondent also encrypted to the attacker's key. When its recipient opened a signed message, the webmail kept the signer's certificate for encrypting replies whether or not the server found its chain trusted, under the first e-mail address the certificate listed rather than the message's From address, and beside any certificate already held for that address. Encrypted mail later sent from the webmail to that address was encrypted to every certificate held for it, so a holder of the kept certificate's key who obtains a copy of such a message can read it.

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the REST API (6.3.3 through 6.3.5) and the IMAP PREVIEW response (6.2.22 through 6.3.5) of Progressive Robot hMailServer allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to make the webmail, the administration console and the REST API unavailable by sending a message. To show a snippet of each message in a folder's message list, the server decoded the character entity references of a message that has an HTML part and no text part with a string replacement whose work grew with the square of their number. A received HTML-only message holding a very large number of entity references therefore keeps one of the listener's four worker threads busy for minutes or longer each time the recipient's webmail lists the folder, without the message being opened, so that a few such listings leave the HTTP listener unable to answer anybody. The IMAP PREVIEW response read such text the same way, holding an IMAP thread for each client that asks for the preview of such a message. The flaw is in the server's shared string class, whose replace and remove both ran in quadratic time.

Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.5 processes several IMAP commands from a signed-in account in time quadratic in the command's length or in the number of elements it names, and can be made to hold memory out of proportion to a command. The FETCH data-item parser normalised a BODY[] section with a case-insensitive string replacement that copied the whole item per occurrence and split the item list by repeatedly copying the remainder of the command; the server's case-insensitive search compared a needle afresh at every position, so a long SEARCH TEXT key over a message cost the product of the two lengths; SEARCH message sets and the saved-result marker ($), SORT criteria, HEADER.FIELDS name lists and UID ranges were each read once per message rather than once per command; and a FETCH naming a message's sections very many times read and held every section in memory before sending any. An IMAP command may continue past one line through non-synchronizing literals, so one command can reach about eleven megabytes. The IMAP worker threads are a small pool shared with SMTP and POP3, so a signed-in user sending such commands can make the IMAP, SMTP and POP3 services stop responding (CWE-407) and can consume excessive memory (CWE-400).

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the decoding of message header fields in Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.5 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to make the IMAP, SMTP and POP3 services, or the webmail, unavailable by sending a message. The server unfolded a decoded header value by finding each line break from the end of the value and removing it, moving the rest of the value each time, so its work grew with the square of the number of line breaks, and an RFC 2047 encoded word may decode to any number of them. A received message whose Subject or other header field holds such a value keeps a worker thread busy for minutes or longer each time the value is read: when the recipient's IMAP client searches, sorts or threads the folder by a header, when the webmail lists the folder, and, where configured, when a rule tests a header, a spam tag is added to the Subject or an abuse report is read during delivery. The IMAP worker threads are shared with SMTP and POP3, so a few such messages stop those services responding. The server's reading of a message header from its file also searched everything read so far after each 4,000 bytes, costing seconds for a header of tens of megabytes.

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the bounce and complaint processing of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.4 and 6.3.5 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to stop mail delivery by sending messages, when bounce processing or complaint processing is enabled or a mailing list is managed by the server (none is by default). The readers of incoming delivery status notifications (RFC 3464) and abuse feedback reports (RFC 5965) removed the blank lines at the start of the returned headers part two bytes at a time, copying the rest of the part each time, so their work grew with the square of the number of blank lines. A message shaped like such a report, whose headers part begins with a very large number of blank lines within the reader's 2 MB limit, keeps a delivery thread busy for over a minute while it is delivered, and a few such messages a minute keep every delivery thread busy.

Improper link resolution and external control of file paths in the administrative command-line operations of hMailServer.exe in Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.4 and 6.3.5 allow a local attacker who already runs code as the low-privilege service account to escalate privilege. On Windows, operations run with administrator rights by the installer, DBSetup, the Control Panel or an administrator wrote log entries and crash records into the log folder, created, deleted and changed the permissions of the self-signed certificate and private key in the data folder, and rewrote message files in the data folder, all by path in folders the service account (NT SERVICE\hMailServer, the default for new installations since 6.3.4) can modify, following junctions and mount points; and the store-maintenance operations reached files by names taken from the database, which the service account can write, including names outside the data folder. On Linux, the store-maintenance and object-storage operations run as root followed symbolic links the service account (the packaged hmailserver user, which owns the data folder) planted in it, so a root-run operation read, wrote or removed the link's target as root. A local attacker controlling the service account can thereby gain the administrator's (Windows) or root's (Linux) privileges when such an operation is run.

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the inbound DKIM and ARC signature verification of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.5 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to make the mail services unavailable by sending a message. Building the canonical header and choosing the header fields named in a signature's h= tag took time growing with the square of the message's header: the 'simple' canonicalisation prepended each continuation line of a folded field to the lines already gathered, and both canonicalisations searched the gathered fields from the bottom for each h= name and erased the match from the middle of the list. A message whose header holds very many fields, or a field folded over very many lines, with a DKIM-Signature the attacker signs for a domain they control, keeps a worker thread busy for tens of seconds per signature; up to ten signatures are evaluated per message by each of the DKIM and DMARC tests, on the threads that serve delivery and SMTP.

Inefficient algorithmic complexity and a non-terminating loop in the MIME processing of received messages in Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.5 allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to make the mail services unavailable by sending a message. Removing a MIME header parameter whose value is empty and directly followed by a semicolon (for example a Content-Disposition with 'filename=a.bat; filename=;') entered a loop that never terminates, holding a worker thread at full load until the server is restarted; this is reached when the attachment blocker renames a blocked attachment or a filename is set over the REST API. Separately, decoding a header field that holds many RFC 2047 encoded words of an encoding other than base64 or quoted-printable, removing a parameter with many RFC 2231 continuations, and deleting many header fields of one name each took time growing with the square of the message, on the small thread pools that serve IMAP, SMTP and POP3 connections, delivery and the REST API.

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the SPF macro expansion of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.4 and 6.3.5 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to consume worker-thread time by publishing a crafted SPF record. RFC 7208 section 7.1 requires a name too long to look up to lose whole labels from the left; the server did this by removing one label at a time and copying the rest of the name each time, so the work grew with the square of the expansion. An attacker who publishes an SPF record for a domain they control, with a mechanism whose domain-spec expands through macros to a name far longer than 253 characters, makes the SPF check of a message from that domain take several seconds. The expansion is bounded by SPF's own per-term and per-macro limits, so the loss of availability is partial.