Resource exhaustion in Open-Xchange Gmbh Ox Dovecot Ce

CVE-2026-40017

An attacker that can send mail to a user can craft a message header whose values are chosen to collide in an internal hash table, which makes the IMAP THREAD command consume CPU disproportionate to the size of the message. This is a separate issue from CVE-2026-40014 and is not addressed by that fix. Whenever a mail client issues a THREAD command on the affected mailbox, this can cause degradation or denial of service for IMAP. Monitor system for abnormal CPU usage, kill the offending process and remove the offending message from the affected mailbox. Update to non-vulnerable version. No publicly available exploits are known.

Vulnerability class: DoS (Denial of Service)

Published · last modified .

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H.

EPSS exploit prediction

EPSS: 0.003 (24.9th percentile), scored .

Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 25th percentile — 24.9% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.

EPSS trend (30 days)EPSS over the last 30 days for CVE-2026-40017: held from 0.003 to 0.003.

EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.003 · newest: 0.003 · change: +0.001

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-40017?
CVE-2026-40017 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Open-Xchange Gmbh Ox Dovecot Ce, classified under Uncontrolled Resource Consumption. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2026-08-28.
How severe is CVE-2026-40017?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.