Public vulnerability disclosure

CVE-2026-126623

Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity in hMailServer

publishedCWE-407

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the JSON reader of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.3.6 and 6.3.7 allows a remote attacker to hold the server's mail delivery threads or its REST API's worker threads, making mail delivery, the REST API and the webmail unavailable. 6.3.6 fixed CVE-2026-107574, in which reading a JSON object searched the member names already read for each new name, by keeping the names in a hash set; the set uses the standard library's hash, which takes no secret, so member names chosen to fall in one bucket of it still cost time growing with the square of their number. Against the released reader, one such object of 16 MB took about 5 seconds to read in the Linux build, and one of under 6 MB about 23 seconds in the Windows build, where objects of the same sizes with other names took under a tenth of a second. A remote unauthenticated attacker reaches the reader by mailing such an object as a TLS-RPT report, up to 16 MB once decompressed, to a hosted domain's report mailbox, where an administrator has set one; it is read on a mail delivery thread (ten by default), and those threads deliver all mail, local and outbound, so a stream of such reports stops all delivery for as long as it continues. It is also reached without an account through the reply to a password-protected message, with the message's link alone, where the REST API is on (it is off by default) and a public base URL for such links is set; and by any account through the webmail's routes granted 16 MB, and by an application's API key through the send API. Each such request holds one of the REST API's four worker threads, in the process that also serves SMTP, IMAP and POP3.

Technical severity7.5 highCVSS 3.1 · CNA: GitLab
Published2026-11-11Source updated 2026-11-11
Collected2026-11-111 attributed source

Fixes and workarounds

Fix

Upgrade to hMailServer 6.3.8, whose JSON reader keeps an object's member names in an ordered set, whose cost does not depend on which names are chosen, and holds a REST request body and a mailed TLS-RPT report to 10,000 members in an object; the reply to a password-protected message is held to 2 MB. Until then, clear each domain's report mailbox, or move it off the domains the server hosts, so that no report is read by the server; and switch OpenPGP in the webmail off (portal_enabled under /api/v1/settings/openpgp), and off for any domain or account that holds openpgp_portal_enabled on, which refuses the reply to a password-protected message before its body is parsed; clearing the public base URL is not enough, since links already made stay usable. For the routes that take an account or an API key, only limiting who can reach the REST API avoids it (RestApiPort 0, the default, turns it off), or a reverse proxy in front of it that holds request bodies well below 16 MB. Restarting the service ends a busy thread.

Source: CNA: GitLab

Affected products and versions

Affected products, source version ranges and reporting authorities
ProductVersionsAuthority
hMailServer
Progressive Robot Ltd
≥ 6.3.6; ≤ 6.3.7 (affected, semver)
Other versions: unaffected
CNA: GitLab

Version ranges are source assertions. Check the vendor advisory and your installed configuration before determining exposure.

CVSS assessments

CVSS scores, vectors and reporting authorities
Version / scoreVectorAuthority
3.1 / 7.5
high
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:HCNA: GitLab

Exploit evidence

No exploit evidence in collected sources. This is not proof of no exploitation.

References

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