Re: mutt recipient parsing memory leak

[Utkarsh Gupta <utkarsh () debian org>]

Hi Tavis,

On Mon, Jan 18, 2021 at 1:11 AM Tavis Ormandy <taviso () gmail com> wrote:
> Hello, I noticed mutt was leaking memory whenever I opened a particular
> mailbox. I tracked down the problem: Using rfc822 groups without the madatory
> labels wasn't being parsed properly.
>
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc822#section-6.2.6
>
> (A spammer had just put some junk in there, they weren't deliberately using
> exotic addressing schemes.. haha).
>
> It turns out that you can send a small message that leaks a *lot* of memory. A
> small message can leak GBs of memory, effectively preventing you from opening
> your mailbox. You would need to use a different mail client to clean up the
> malformed message before you can use mutt again.
>
> I sent this upstream as a DoS, but they don't want to treat it as a security
> isssue. I though I'd just send a FYI here instead in case anyone wants to
> backport the patch.

Got CVE-2021-3181 assigned for this!


- u