fetchmail: Buffer Overflow

fetchmail: Buffer Overflow fetchmail is susceptible to a buffer overflow resulting in a Denial of Service or arbitrary code execution. fetchmail 2005-07-25 2005-07-25 99865 remote 6.2.5.2 6.2.5.2

fetchmail is a utility that retrieves and forwards mail from remote systems using IMAP, POP, and other protocols.

fetchmail does not properly validate UIDs coming from a POP3 mail server. The UID is placed in a fixed length buffer on the stack, which can be overflown.

Very long UIDs returned from a malicious or compromised POP3 server can cause fetchmail to crash, resulting in a Denial of Service, or allow arbitrary code to be placed on the stack.

There are no known workarounds at this time.

All fetchmail users should upgrade to the latest version:


    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-mail/fetchmail-6.2.5.2"

Fetchmail Security Advisory CAN-2005-2335 r2d2 adir