CVE-2021-3181

Publication date 19 January 2021

Last updated 25 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

rfc822.c in Mutt through 2.0.4 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (mailbox unavailability) by sending email messages with sequences of semicolon characters in RFC822 address fields (aka terminators of empty groups). A small email message from the attacker can cause large memory consumption, and the victim may then be unable to see email messages from other persons.

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
mutt	20.10 groovy	Fixed 1.14.6-1ubuntu0.2
	20.04 LTS focal	Fixed 1.13.2-1ubuntu0.4
	18.04 LTS bionic	Fixed 1.9.4-3ubuntu0.5
	16.04 LTS xenial	Fixed 1.5.24-1ubuntu0.6
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not in release

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	6.5 · Medium
Attack vector	Network
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	None
User interaction	Required
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	None
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

USN-4703-1
Mutt vulnerability
25 January 2021