CVE-2005-2024 in razor-agents
Summary
by MITRE
Vipul Razor Agents (razor-agents) before 2.70 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via (1) certain "unusual HTML messages" or (2) "certain malformed headers" such as Content-Type.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 06/02/2019
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2005-2024 affects Vipul Razor Agents version 2.70 and earlier, representing a significant denial of service weakness in email content filtering systems. This flaw exists within the message processing logic of the razor-agents software, which is designed to identify and filter spam messages by analyzing content patterns and metadata. The vulnerability manifests when the system encounters specific types of malformed email data that it cannot properly handle during parsing operations.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability stems from insufficient input validation and error handling mechanisms within the razor-agents processing pipeline. When the system encounters "unusual HTML messages" or "certain malformed headers" particularly those involving Content-Type fields, the parsing routines fail to properly sanitize or reject the malformed data. This leads to a cascade of processing failures that can cause the agent to crash or become unresponsive, effectively denying service to legitimate email traffic. The vulnerability operates at the application layer and requires no authentication to exploit, making it particularly dangerous in production environments.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple service disruption, as it can be leveraged by attackers to systematically degrade email services across organizations relying on razor-agents for spam filtering. Network administrators may experience prolonged periods of email service unavailability while attempting to recover from the denial of service conditions. The vulnerability particularly affects email security infrastructure where multiple agents are deployed, as a single exploited instance can cause cascading failures throughout the filtering network. This represents a classic case of a resource exhaustion or application crash vulnerability that can be amplified through repeated exploitation attempts.
Organizations should implement immediate mitigation strategies including upgrading to version 2.70 or later of the razor-agents software, which contains the necessary patches to handle malformed input properly. Network segmentation and input validation measures should be strengthened at the email gateway level to prevent malformed messages from reaching the vulnerable agents. The vulnerability aligns with CWE-129, which addresses improper validation of input boundaries, and can be categorized under ATT&CK technique T1499.1 for network denial of service. Additionally, implementing rate limiting and connection throttling measures can help reduce the effectiveness of exploitation attempts while maintaining legitimate service availability.