Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity in hMailServer

QFinch assessment

Inefficient algorithmic complexity in the inbound DKIM and ARC signature verification of Progressive Robot hMailServer 6.0.0 through 6.3.5 allows a remote unauthenticated attacker to make the mail services unavailable by sending a message. Building the canonical header and choosing the header fields named in a signature's h= tag took time growing with the square of the message's header: the 'simple' canonicalisation prepended each continuation line of a folded field to the lines already gathered, and both canonicalisations searched the gathered fields from the bottom for each h= name and erased the match from the middle of the list. A message whose header holds very many fields, or a field folded over very many lines, with a DKIM-Signature the attacker signs for a domain they control, keeps a worker thread busy for tens of seconds per signature; up to ten signatures are evaluated per message by each of the DKIM and DMARC tests, on the threads that serve delivery and SMTP.