Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 7.5

CVE-2020-7046 in the critical feed json

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 demonstrate…

published 6y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2020-28180

cvss
7.5
version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
51.3%
EPSS 51.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 98%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • dovecot dovecot 2.3.9.3
  • dovecot24 openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.4.0-1.1
  • dovecot23 openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.3.16-1.6

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2025:14715-1openSUSE-SU-2024:10726-1

  • dovecot Alpine 3.10, Alpine 3.9, Alpine 3.8 2.3.10.1-r0
  • dovecot Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +11 more 2.3.9.3-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2020-7046

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • dovecot Arch Linux 2.3.9.3-1

arch linux advisories AVG-1097

Is CVE-2020-7046 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

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-2020-7046 updated cvss 7.5

dovecot: Attacker can cause submission-login and lmtp processes to be exhausted leading to DoS

  • 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 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 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

51.26% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 98% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.0 7.5 CVSS:3.0/AC:L/AV:N/A:H/C:N/I:N/PR:N/S:U/UI:N
NVD 3.1 7.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
CNA 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 7.8 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-835 Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition

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.