Vulnerability Note VU#961489

University of Washington IMAP Server vulnerable to buffer overflow after login

Overview

A buffer overflow vulnerability exists in versions of the University of Washington IMAP Server up to and including the imap-2002 release. This vulnerability may allow an authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the mail server with the privileges of the UID of the user running imapd.

I. Description

The University of Washington IMAP (UW IMAP) server is an e-mail application that uses the Internet Message Access Protocol (lMAP). The current release imap-2002 and prior contain a buffer overflow vulnerability that may be exploited after authentication to the IMAP server. The imap-2001 releases contain the vulnerable code, but the functionality that enabled exploitation was disabled by default. This vulnerability may allow an authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the mail server with the privileges of the UW IMAP Server. Note that the UW IMAP server runs with the UID of the user who started the process.

Also note that a vulnerable version of the UW IMAP server shipped with Pine 4.50 and prior.

II. Impact

This vulnerability may allow an authenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on the mail server with the privileges of the UW IMAP Server. Note that the UW IMAP server runs under the UID of the user who started the process.

III. Solution

This vulnerability is fixed in the latest development snapshot of the imap-2002a release. It is recommended that users upgrade to this version.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Notified	Date Updated
University of Washington	Vulnerable	9-Dec-2002

References

http://www.washington.edu/imap/
http://www.washington.edu/imap/buffer.html
ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/mail/imap.tar.Z

Credit

Thanks to the University of Washington IMAP team for reporting this vulnerability.

This document was written by Jason A Rafail.

Other Information

Date Public:	2002-12-06
Date First Published:	2002-12-09
Date Last Updated:	2002-12-09
CERT Advisory:
CVE-ID(s):
NVD-ID(s):
US-CERT Technical Alerts:
Metric:	0.66
Document Revision:	8

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