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CVE-2026-61816: CWE-400: Uncontrolled Resource Consumption in zbateson mail-mime-parser

0
High
VulnerabilityCVE-2026-61816cvecve-2026-61816cwe-400
Published: 09/24/2026 (09/24/2026, 17:55:11 UTC)
Source: CVE Database V5
Vendor/Project: zbateson
Product: mail-mime-parser

Description

zbateson/mail-mime-parser is a mail mime parser alternative to PHP's imap* functions and Pear libraries for reading messages in Internet Message Format RFC 822. Starting in version 2.0.0 and prior to version 3.0.6 and 4.0.2, an uncontrolled resource consumption / algorithmic complexity vulnerability (CWE-400) affects any application that parses untrusted email with this library. Three independent parsing paths are super-linear in cost, so a byte-size cap on the caller side does **not** bound the work done. A crafted message under 2 MB can consume seconds of CPU or hundreds of megabytes to multiple gigabytes of memory (leading to an out-of-memory kill), enabling denial of service. The parse is lazy, but the cost is paid on the first `getAllParts()` or content read. This is fxed in 4.0.2 and 3.0.6. The fixes add configurable limits on multipart nesting depth and on header count / total header size (recording a parse error past the threshold rather than throwing), and change sibling append to O(n). Users should upgrade to one of these (or later) versions. Versions 2.x are also affected but are end-of-life and will not receive patches; users on those lines should upgrade to a fixed release. (Versions prior to 2.0 used a different parser and are not affected by all three paths.) These costs are super-linear, so an input byte-size cap alone does not bound them. Until upgrading, restrict exposure of the parser to untrusted input, and run parsing under a constrained memory_limit and execution time limit so a malicious message fails its own request rather than exhausting the host.

CVSS v3.1

Score 7.5high

Attack Vector
Network
Attack Complexity
Low
Privileges Required
None
User Interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
None
Availability
High
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

Affected software

zbateson

mail-mime-parser

Affected versions
>=2.0.0 <3.0.6>=4.0.0 <4.0.2

Technical Details

Data Version
5.2
Assigner Short Name
GitHub_M
Date Reserved
2026-07-10T20:17:57.992Z
Cvss Version
3.1
State
PUBLISHED

Threat ID: 6ab5661ef7a7c54106a606a6

Added to database: 09/24/2026, 18:04:14 UTC

Last updated: 09/24/2026, 18:04:14 UTC

Views: 1

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