The Internet Mail Service in Exchange Server 5.5 and Exchange 2000 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory exhaustion)…

published 2003-10-17 23 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2003-0705

cvss: 7.5; version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 77.6%; EPSS 77.6% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.5%
public exploits: 3; Metasploit, Exploit-DB

The Internet Mail Service in Exchange Server 5.5 and Exchange 2000 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory exhaustion) by directly connecting to the SMTP service and sending a certain extended verb request, possibly triggering a buffer overflow in Exchange 2000.

Patch / fix

links 3

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2003/ms03-046 advisory
kb.cert.org/vuls/id/422156 advisory
securityfocus.com/bid/8838 advisory

Timeline

2003-10-15 First public exploit (Metasploit exploit/windows/smtp/ms03_046_exchange2000_xexch50)
2003-10-17 Published

Exploit prediction

77.61% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.5% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

Metasploit exploit/windows/smtp/ms03_046_exchange2000_xexch50 MS03-046 Exchange 2000 XEXCH50 Heap Overflow metasploit exploit, good rank, 2003-10-15
EDB-16820 Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 - XEXCH50 Heap Overflow (MS03-046) (Metasploit) remote, 2010-11-11
EDB-113 Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 - XEXCH50 Heap Overflow (PoC) (MS03-046) dos, 2003-10-22
securityfocus.com http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/8838 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	2.0	7.5	AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness

CWE-400 Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Technology feeds

Microsoft Exchange rss critical rss

References

docs.microsoft.com /en-us/security-updates/securitybulletins/2003/ms03-046
vendor-advisory, patch
kb.cert.org /vuls/id/422156
third-party-advisory, patch, us-government-resource
securityfocus.com /bid/8838
vdb-entry, exploit, patch, third-party-advisory
cert.org /advisories/CA-2003-27.html
third-party-advisory, us-government-resource
marc.info /?l=bugtraq&m=106682909006586&w=2
mailing-list, third-party-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2003-0714
NVD CVE-2003-0714

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary