CVE-2019-11500

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 62.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2019-08-29 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-787

Description

In Dovecot before 2.2.36.4 and 2.3.x before 2.3.7.2 (and Pigeonhole before 0.5.7.2), protocol processing can fail for quoted strings. This occurs because '\0' characters are mishandled, and can lead to out-of-bounds writes and remote code execution.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 8.0
dovecot: before 2.2.36.4; from 2.3.0 before 2.3.7.2 — fixed in 2.2.36.4, 2.3.7.2
dovecot Pigeonhole: before 0.5.7.2 — fixed in 0.5.7.2
Fedoraproject Fedora: 30

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: dovecot 2.2.36.4, 2.3.7.2; dovecot Pigeonhole 0.5.7.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-10/msg00024.html
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-10/msg00026.html
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2019/08/28/3
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:2822
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:2836
https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2019:2885
https://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot-news/2019-August/000417.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2019/08/msg00035.html
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/3GYTZLLDNIFWT7D7JSB25ERJNMOR4CQ3/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/KVHY3MU2OK2EWZJFGNDSAOMD42L7DFPX/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/YSJVVVRAE3SITC2ZLGCPMFDN3WVYZBWF/
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201908-29

Get alerted when CVE-2019-11500 or the next vulnerability affects your stack