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Fencer Vulns
medium 5.0

CVE-2003-0540 json

The address parser code in Postfix 1.1.12 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (lock) via (1) a malformed envel…

published 2003-08-05 23 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2003-0534

cvss
5.0
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
21.3%
EPSS 21.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 97%
public exploits
2
Exploit-DB

Summary

The address parser code in Postfix 1.1.12 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (lock) via (1) a malformed envelope address to a local host that would generate a bounce and contains the ".!" string in the MAIL FROM or Errors-To headers, which causes nqmgr to lock up, or (2) via a valid MAIL FROM with a RCPT TO containing a ".!" string, which causes an instance of the SMTP listener to lock up.

Patch / fix

  • postfix Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.1.12

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2003-0540

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2003-0540 updated

security flaw

  • Red Hat Linux 7.3 Red Hat Linux 8.0 Red Hat Linux 9
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2003:251

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-22982)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

21.26% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 97% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-22982 Postfix 1.1.x - Denial of Service (2) dos, 2003-08-04
  • EDB-22981 Postfix 1.1.x - Denial of Service (1) dos, 2003-08-04

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 5.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

References

Sources

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.