Multiple stack-based buffer overflows in (1) University of Washington IMAP Toolkit 2002 through 2007c, (2) University of Washington Alpine 2.00 and earlier, and (3) Panda IMAP allow (a) local users to gain privileges by specifying a long folder extension argument on the command line to the tmail or dmail program; and (b) remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by sending e-mail to a destination mailbox name composed of a username and '+' character followed by a long string, processed by the tmail or possibly dmail program.

From Red Hat Security Advisory 2009:0275 :

Updated imap packages to fix a security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

The imap package provides server daemons for both the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP (Post Office Protocol) mail access protocols.

A buffer overflow flaw was discovered in the dmail and tmail mail delivery utilities shipped with imap. If either of these utilities were used as a mail delivery agent, a remote attacker could potentially use this flaw to run arbitrary code as the targeted user by sending a specially crafted mail message to the victim.
(CVE-2008-5005)

Users of imap should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to resolve this issue.

A buffer overflow flaw was discovered in the dmail and tmail mail delivery utilities shipped with imap. If either of these utilities were used as a mail delivery agent, a remote attacker could potentially use this flaw to run arbitrary code as the targeted user by sending a specially crafted mail message to the victim.
(CVE-2008-5005)

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200911-03 (UW IMAP toolkit: Multiple vulnerabilities)

    Multiple vulnerabilities were found in the UW IMAP toolkit:
    Aron Andersson and Jan Sahlin of Bitsec reported boundary errors in     the 'tmail' and 'dmail' utilities when processing overly long mailbox     names, leading to stack-based buffer overflows (CVE-2008-5005).
    An error in smtp.c in the c-client library was found, leading to a     NULL pointer dereference vulnerability (CVE-2008-5006).
    Ludwig     Nussel reported an off-by-one error in the rfc822_output_char()     function in the RFC822BUFFER routines in the c-client library, as used     by the UW IMAP toolkit (CVE-2008-5514).
  Impact :

    A remote attacker could send an e-mail to a destination mailbox name     composed of a username and '+' character followed by a long string,     possibly leading to the execution of arbitrary code. A local attacker     could gain privileges by specifying a long folder extension argument to     the tmail or dmail program. Furthermore, a remote attacker could send a     specially crafted mail message to the UW IMAP toolkit or another daemon     using the c-client library, leading to a Denial of Service. A remote     SMTP server could respond to the QUIT command with a close of the TCP     connection instead of the expected 221 response code, possibly leading     to a Denial of Service.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

Security vulnerabilities has been identified and fixed in University of Washington IMAP Toolkit :

Multiple stack-based buffer overflows in (1) University of Washington IMAP Toolkit 2002 through 2007c, (2) University of Washington Alpine 2.00 and earlier, and (3) Panda IMAP allow (a) local users to gain privileges by specifying a long folder extension argument on the command line to the tmail or dmail program; and (b) remote attackers to execute arbitrary code by sending e-mail to a destination mailbox name composed of a username and '+' character followed by a long string, processed by the tmail or possibly dmail program (CVE-2008-5005).

smtp.c in the c-client library in University of Washington IMAP Toolkit 2007b allows remote SMTP servers to cause a denial of service (NULL pointer dereference and application crash) by responding to the QUIT command with a close of the TCP connection instead of the expected 221 response code (CVE-2008-5006).

Off-by-one error in the rfc822_output_char function in the RFC822BUFFER routines in the University of Washington (UW) c-client library, as used by the UW IMAP toolkit before imap-2007e and other applications, allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via an e-mail message that triggers a buffer overflow (CVE-2008-5514).

The updated packages have been patched to prevent this. Note that the software was renamed to c-client starting from Mandriva Linux 2009.0 and only provides the shared c-client library for the imap functions in PHP.

Update :

Packages for 2008.0 are provided for Corporate Desktop 2008.0 customers.

Updated imap packages to fix a security issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

The imap package provides server daemons for both the IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) and POP (Post Office Protocol) mail access protocols.

A buffer overflow flaw was discovered in the dmail and tmail mail delivery utilities shipped with imap. If either of these utilities were used as a mail delivery agent, a remote attacker could potentially use this flaw to run arbitrary code as the targeted user by sending a specially crafted mail message to the victim.
(CVE-2008-5005)

Users of imap should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to resolve this issue.

Two vulnerabilities have been found in uw-imap, an IMAP implementation. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project identifies the following problems :

It was discovered that several buffer overflows can be triggered via a long folder extension argument to the tmail or dmail program. This could lead to arbitrary code execution (CVE-2008-5005 ).

It was discovered that a NULL pointer dereference could be triggered by a malicious response to the QUIT command leading to a denial of service (CVE-2008-5006 ).

Addresses a security vulnerability in tmail and dmail:
http://mailman2.u.washington.edu/pipermail/imap-uw/2008-October/002267 .html

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

There is a flaw in the remote UW-IMAP server that allows a local user to execute arbitrary code on the server.  The flaw is in the way that UW-IMAP handles malformed data sent to the 'tmail' and 'dmail' local executables.  An attacker exploiting this flaw would need local access as well as the ability to execute the aforementioned binaries.  Successful exploiation would result in the attacker executing arbitrary code as the 'root' user.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
67805	Oracle Linux 3 : imap (ELSA-2009-0275)	Nessus	Oracle Linux Local Security Checks	critical
60537	Scientific Linux Security Update : imap on SL3.x i386/x86_64	Nessus	Scientific Linux Local Security Checks	critical
42913	GLSA-200911-03 : UW IMAP toolkit: Multiple vulnerabilities	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	critical
39573	Mandriva Linux Security Advisory : imap (MDVSA-2009:146-1)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	critical
35721	RHEL 3 : imap (RHSA-2009:0275)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	critical
35718	CentOS 3 : imap (CESA-2009:0275)	Nessus	CentOS Local Security Checks	critical
35091	Debian DSA-1685-1 : uw-imap - buffer overflows, NULL pointer dereference	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	critical
34707	Fedora 9 : uw-imap-2007d-1.fc9 (2008-9396)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	critical
34706	Fedora 8 : uw-imap-2007d-1.fc8 (2008-9383)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	critical
4730	UW-IMAP < 2007d.404 Multiple Utility Mailbox Name Overflow	Nessus Network Monitor	IMAP Servers	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2008-5005

high

Tenable Plugins

critical

critical

critical

critical

critical

critical

critical

critical

critical

high