CVE-2019-15961

Description

From CVE.org

A vulnerability in the email parsing module Clam AntiVirus (ClamAV) Software versions 0.102.0, 0.101.4 and prior could allow an unauthenticated, remote attacker to cause a denial of service condition on an affected device. The vulnerability is due to inefficient MIME parsing routines that result in extremely long scan times of specially formatted email files. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by sending a crafted email file to an affected device. An exploit could allow the attacker to cause the ClamAV scanning process to scan the crafted email file indefinitely, resulting in a denial of service condition.

Statement

Red Hat Product Security has determined that this vulnerability does not affect any currently supported Red Hat product. This assessment may evolve based on further analysis and discovery. For more information about this vulnerability and the products it affects, please see the linked references.

Understanding the Weakness (CWE)

Availability

Technical Impact: DoS: Crash, Exit, or Restart; DoS: Resource Consumption (CPU); DoS: Resource Consumption (Memory); DoS: Resource Consumption (Other)

If an attacker can trigger the allocation of the limited resources, but the number or size of the resources is not controlled, then the most common result is denial of service. This would prevent valid users from accessing the product, and it could potentially have an impact on the surrounding environment, i.e., the product may slow down, crash due to unhandled errors, or lock out legitimate users. For example, a memory exhaustion attack against an application could slow down the application as well as its host operating system.

Access Control,Other

Technical Impact: Bypass Protection Mechanism; Other

In some cases it may be possible to force the product to "fail open" in the event of resource exhaustion. The state of the product -- and possibly the security functionality - may then be compromised.

Frequently Asked Questions

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