CVE-2025-43857
Prior to versions 0.5.7, 0.4.20, 0.3.9, and 0.2.5, there is a possibility for denial of service by memory exhaustion when net-imap reads server responses.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.49%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
Net::IMAP implements Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) client functionality in Ruby. Prior to versions 0.5.7, 0.4.20, 0.3.9, and 0.2.5, there is a possibility for denial of service by memory exhaustion when net-imap reads server responses. At any time while the client is connected, a malicious server can send can send a "literal" byte count, which is automatically read by the client's receiver thread. The response reader immediately allocates memory for the number of bytes indicated by the server response. This should not be an issue when securely connecting to trusted IMAP servers that are well-behaved. It can affect insecure connections and buggy, untrusted, or compromised servers (for example, connecting to a user supplied hostname). This issue has been patched in versions 0.5.7, 0.4.20, 0.3.9, and 0.2.5.
- CVSS 4.0
- 6.0 MEDIUMCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.49% probability · 42th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-400, CWE-405, CWE-770, CWE-789
- Affected
- ruby-lang/net\
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
EPSS 0.5% since 26 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- https://github.com/ruby/net-imap/pull/442Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://github.com/ruby/net-imap/pull/444/commits/0ae8576c1a90bcd9573f81bdad4b4b824642d105#diff-53721cb4d9c3fb86b95cc8476ca2df90968ad8c481645220c607034399151462Patch
- https://github.com/ruby/net-imap/pull/445Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://github.com/ruby/net-imap/pull/446Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://github.com/ruby/net-imap/pull/447Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://github.com/ruby/net-imap/security/advisories/GHSA-j3g3-5qv5-52mjVendor Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.