Check Point Advisories

MailEnable IMAP Service Buffer Overflow (CVE-2004-2501)

Vulnerability
Protection

Check Point Reference:	CPAI-2004-203
Date Published:	4 Nov 2009
Severity:	Critical
Last Updated:	Wednesday 04 November, 2009
Source:
Industry Reference:	CVE-2004-2501
Protection Provided by:	Security Gateway R81, R80, R77, R75
Who is Vulnerable?
Vulnerability Description	The Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) allows the access and manipulation of electronic mail. The protocol permits the manipulation of mailboxes on a remote server and allows a remote client, among other operations, to create, delete, or rename mailboxes on the server side. The MailEnable server is an implementation of the server side of the IMAP protocol. IMAP is based on a set of standard text commands. The commands comprise an identifier, a command and command parameters separated by space characters. The commands are separated by new line characters. A vulnerability exists in the way the IMAP service in MailEnable parses IMAP data. Specially crafted data sent to the IMAP service can trigger a buffer overflow. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability to create a denial of service condition or execute arbitrary code. In a simple attack, the attacker can crash the IMAP service of the MailEnable product suite. This will also terminate all active IMAP connections. In the default Windows configuration, the service does not restart after failures. Therefore, the IMAP service will be unavailable until an administrator restarts the service. E-mail will be unavailable to users of the service. In a sophisticated attack, an attacker can inject code into the vulnerable target. The behaviour of the target is dependent on the malicious code. Note that any code executed by the attacker runs with the privileges of the IMAP service which is SYSTEM.

Protection Overview

This protection will detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability

In order for the protection to be activated, update your Security Gateway product to the latest IPS update. For information on how to update IPS, go to SBP-2006-05, click on Protection tab and select the version of your choice.

Security Gateway R80 / R77 / R75

In the IPS tab, click Protections and find the MailEnable IMAP Service Buffer Overflow protection using the Search tool and Edit the protection's settings.
Install policy on all Security Gateways.

This protection's log will contain the following information:

Attack Name: IMAP Protocol Violation.
Attack Information: MailEnable IMAP service buffer overflow