Check Point Advisories

Preemptive Protection against Mercury Mail IMAP Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Check Point Reference:	CPAI-2007-042
Date Published:	11 Apr 2007
Severity:	High
Last Updated:	Wednesday 25 April, 2007
Source:	Secunia Advisory: SA13348
Industry Reference:	CVE-2004-1211
Protection Provided by:
Who is Vulnerable?	Mercury Mail version 4.01 and Prior
Vulnerability Description	Multiple buffer overflow vulnerabilities exist in Mercury Mail Transport System. Mercury Mail Transport System is a free mail server program that supports various email access and exchange protocols, including the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP). IMAP is a standard protocol for accessing e-mail from a local server that provides management of received messages on a remote server. Several mail servers contain buffer overflow errors in the way they handle commands. A remote attacker can exploit this issue to trigger a buffer overflow which may lead to an application crash and to arbitrary code execution.
Update/Patch Avaliable	Apply patch: ftp://ftp.usm.maine.edu/pegasus/mercury32/m32-401b.zip
Vulnerability Details	The vulnerability is due to a buffer overflow error when processing malformed IMAP commands. A remote attacker can exploit this flaw via a specially crafted IMAP command with an overly long string in its parameter. Successful exploitation may allow an attacker to create a denial of service condition or execute arbitrary code on an affected system.