Vulnerability record · CVE-2026-27857 · published 27 March 2026
CVE-2026-27857: Dovecot uncontrolled resource consumption vulnerability
Dovecot · Dovecot
Sending "NOOP (((...)))" command with 4000 parenthesis open+close results in ~1MB extra memory usage. Longer commands will result in client disconnection. This 1 MB can be left allocated for longer time periods by not sending the command ending LF. So attacker could connect possibly from even a single IP and create 1000 connections to allocate 1 GB of memory, which would likely result in reaching VSZ limit and killing the process and its other proxied connections. Attacker could connect possibly from even a single IP and create 1000 connections to allocate 1 GB of memory, which would likely result in reaching VSZ limit and killing the process and its other proxied connections. Install fixed version, there is no other remediation. No publicly available exploits are known.
Description
Sending "NOOP (((...)))" command with 4000 parenthesis open+close results in ~1MB extra memory usage. Longer commands will result in client disconnection. This 1 MB can be left allocated for longer time periods by not sending the command ending LF. So attacker could connect possibly from even a single IP and create 1000 connections to allocate 1 GB of memory, which would likely result in reaching VSZ limit and killing the process and its other proxied connections. Attacker could connect possibly from even a single IP and create 1000 connections to allocate 1 GB of memory, which would likely result in reaching VSZ limit and killing the process and its other proxied connections. Install fixed version, there is no other remediation. No publicly available exploits are known.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Affected products
2 vulnerable configurations from NVD's CPE data, grouped by vendor and product.
References
Track CVE-2026-27857 inside VULONE
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2026-27857), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.
