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Fencer Intel
low 3.7

CVE-2017-2669 json

Dovecot before version 2.2.29 is vulnerable to a denial of service.

published 2018-06-21 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-11814

cvss
3.7
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
4.3%
EPSS 4.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 91%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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 var_expand() 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.

Patch / fix

  • dovecot Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1:2.2.27-3

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-2669

  • dovecot22 SLES for SAP 12 SP2, SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES for Raspberry Pi 12 SP2 +4 more 2.2.29.1-11.1
  • dovecot SLES for SAP 12 SP2, SLES for SAP 12 SP1, SLES for Raspberry Pi 12 SP2 +2 more 2.2-3.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2017:1250-1

  • dovecot Arch Linux 2.2.29.1-1

arch linux advisories AVG-238

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2017-2669 updated cvss 3.7

dovecot: Dovecot DoS when passdb dict was used for authentication

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 dovecot Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 dovecot, dovecot-mysql, dovecot-pgsql, dovecot-pigeonhole Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 dovecot, dovecot-mysql, dovecot-pgsql, dovecot-pigeonhole
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

4.31% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 91% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 3.7 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:L
NVD 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

Affected products

  • [UNKNOWN] dovecot

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-20 Improper Input Validation

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.