The ACL plugin in Dovecot before 1.1.4 allows attackers to bypass intended access restrictions by using the "k" right to create unauthorized "parent/child/child" mailboxes.

The Rocky Linux 8.6 host has packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the CIQ ciqsa-2026_0035 advisory.

    This advisory aggregates security fixes for the dovecot SRPM in CIQ LTS 8.6. It addresses 21 CVEs:
    CVE-2019-11500, CVE-2020-24386, CVE-2020-25275, CVE-2020-12100, CVE-2017-14461, and 16 more.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the CIQ security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

The ACL plugin in dovecot prior to version 1.1.4 treated negative access rights as though they were positive access rights, which allowed attackers to bypass intended access restrictions (CVE-2008-4577).

The ACL plugin in dovecot prior to version 1.1.4 allowed attackers to bypass intended access restrictions by using the 'k' right to create unauthorized 'parent/child/child' mailboxes (CVE-2008-4578).

In addition, two bugs were discovered in the dovecot package shipped with Mandriva Linux 2009.0. The default permissions on the dovecot.conf configuration file were too restrictive, which prevents the use of dovecot's 'deliver' command as a non-root user. Secondly, dovecot should not start until after ntpd, if ntpd is active, because if ntpd corrects the time backwards while dovecot is running, dovecot will quit automatically, with the log message 'Time just moved backwards by X seconds. This might cause a lot of problems, so I'll just kill myself now.' The update resolves both these problems. The default permissions on dovecot.conf now allow the 'deliver' command to read the file. Note that if you edited dovecot.conf at all prior to installing the update, the new permissions may not be applied. If you find the 'deliver' command still does not work following the update, please run these commands as root :

# chmod 0640 /etc/dovecot.conf # chown root:mail /etc/dovecot.conf

Dovecot's initialization script now configures it to start after the ntpd service, to ensure ntpd resetting the clock does not interfere with Dovecot operation.

This package corrects the above-noted bugs and security issues by upgrading to the latest dovecot 1.1.6, which also provides additional bug fixes.

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200812-16 (Dovecot: Multiple vulnerabilities)

    Several vulnerabilities were found in Dovecot:
    The 'k'     right in the acl_plugin does not work as expected (CVE-2008-4577,     CVE-2008-4578)     The dovecot.conf is world-readable, providing     improper protection for the ssl_key_password setting     (CVE-2008-4870)     A permanent Denial of Service with broken mail     headers is possible (CVE-2008-4907)   Impact :

    These vulnerabilities might allow a remote attacker to cause a Denial     of Service, to circumvent security restrictions or allow local     attackers to disclose the passphrase of the SSL private key.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

Timo Sirainen reports in dovecot 1.1.4 release notes :

ACL plugin fixes: Negative rights were actually treated as positive rights. 'k' right didn't prevent creating parent/child/child mailbox.
ACL groups weren't working.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Type	Severity
357898	Rocky Linux 8.6 [CIQ] Security Update: dovecot / dovecot-debuginfo / dovecot-debugsource / dovecot-devel / etc Multiple Vulnerabilities (ciqsa-2026_0035)	Nessus	Rocky Linux Local Security Checks	Local	critical
38066	Mandriva Linux Security Advisory : dovecot (MDVSA-2008:232)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	Local	medium
35108	GLSA-200812-16 : Dovecot: Multiple vulnerabilities	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	Local	medium
34838	FreeBSD : dovecot -- ACL plugin bypass vulnerabilities (75c24c1d-b688-11dd-88fd-001c2514716c)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	Local	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2008-4578

high

Tenable Plugins

critical

medium

medium

medium