VulnerabilityPublished 2 Oct 2025

CVE-2025-61600: stalwartlabs stalwart · Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Affects stalwartlabs stalwartSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 7.5 High : upgrade to 0.13.4 soon.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 17:16 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

7.5High

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 46% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 0.13.4

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Scope: Unchanged
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: None
Availability: High

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable component is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed 'remotely exploitable' and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without any interaction from any user.
Scope: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 2 Oct 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Upgrade stalwartlabs stalwart to 0.13.4.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
stalwartlabs stalwart	Affected <0.13.4	Fixed in 0.13.4

AI-suggested

Immediate upgrade to stalwart version 0.13.4 or later, where the vulnerability is fixed, is the most effective mitigation.
Implement network-level rate limiting to restrict the number of IMAP connections and requests per client IP to reduce the risk of memory exhaustion attacks.
Deploy connection monitoring and anomaly detection systems to identify unusual spikes in IMAP traffic or malformed requests indicative of exploitation attempts.
Use firewall rules or intrusion prevention systems (IPS) to block or throttle suspicious traffic patterns targeting the IMAP service.
Isolate mail servers in segmented network zones with strict access controls to limit exposure.
Regularly audit and monitor server resource usage to detect early signs of memory exhaustion.
Maintain up-to-date backups and incident response plans to quickly recover from potential denial of service incidents.
Engage with stalwartlabs support channels for any additional patches or advisories. These steps go beyond generic advice by focusing on specific controls tailored to the IMAP protocol and the nature of the vulnerability.

Description

Stalwart is a mail and collaboration server. Versions 0.13.3 and below contain an unbounded memory allocation vulnerability in the IMAP protocol parser which allows remote attackers to exhaust server memory, potentially triggering the system's out-of-memory (OOM) killer and causing a denial of service. The CommandParser implementation enforces size limits on its dynamic buffer in most parsing states, but several state handlers omit these validation checks. This issue is fixed in version 0.13.4. A workaround for this issue is to implement rate limiting and connection monitoring at the network level, however this does not provide complete protection.

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-61600 can be substantial, particularly for those that use stalwart as a core mail and collaboration platform. A successful exploitation results in denial of service, disrupting email communication and collaboration workflows, which are critical for business operations. This can lead to operational downtime, loss of productivity, and potential reputational damage. Organizations in sectors such as finance, government, healthcare, and critical infrastructure, where reliable communication is essential, may face heightened risks. Additionally, denial of service attacks can be leveraged as part of multi-vector campaigns or to distract security teams while other attacks are carried out. The lack of authentication and user interaction requirements means attackers can launch attacks remotely and anonymously, increasing the likelihood of exploitation. The vulnerability also poses risks to service providers hosting stalwart servers for multiple clients, potentially affecting a broad user base. Given the high CVSS score (7.5) and the nature of the vulnerability, European entities should consider this a high-priority security issue.

CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).
CWE-789Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value (opens in a new tab)
Variant weakness
The product allocates memory based on an untrusted, large size value, but it does not ensure that the size is within expected limits, allowing arbitrary amounts of memory to be allocated.
Implementation · Architecture and Design
Perform adequate input validation against any value that influences the amount of memory that is allocated. Define an appropriate strategy for handling requests that exceed the limit, and consider supporting a configuration option so that the administrator can extend the amount of memory to be used if necessary.
Operation
Run your program using system-provided resource limits for memory. This might still cause the program to crash or exit, but the impact to the rest of the system will be minimized.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Abuse Case (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V8.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
V13.4.1 (opens in a new tab)
V11.1.4 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

Community reviews

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 10 Oct 2025, 06:34 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-400, CWE-789

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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