Mutt: Buffer overflow

Background

Mutt is a small but very powerful text-based mail client.

Description

TAKAHASHI Tamotsu has discovered that Mutt contains a boundary error in the “browse_get_namespace()” function in browse.c, which can be triggered when receiving an overly long namespace from an IMAP server.

Impact

A malicious IMAP server can send an overly long namespace to Mutt in order to crash the application, and possibly execute arbitrary code with the permissions of the user running Mutt.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Mutt users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=mail-client/mutt-1.5.11-r2"