Vulnerability Database

383,371

Total vulnerabilities in the database

CVE-2008-5514 — university_of_washington / imap

Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer

Off-by-one error in the rfc822_output_char function in the RFC822BUFFER routines in the University of Washington (UW) c-client library, as used by the UW IMAP toolkit before imap-2007e and other applications, allows context-dependent attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via an e-mail message that triggers a buffer overflow.

  • Published: Dec 23, 2008
  • Updated: Sep 13, 2026
  • CVE: CVE-2008-5514
  • Severity: Medium
  • Exploit:
  • CISA KEV:

CVSS v2:

  • Severity: Medium
  • Score: 4.3
  • AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P

CWEs:

Software Affected versions
university_of_washington / imap <= 2007d
university_of_washington / imap = 2000
university_of_washington / imap = 2000a
university_of_washington / imap = 2000b
university_of_washington / imap = 2000c
university_of_washington / imap = 2001
university_of_washington / imap = 2001a
university_of_washington / imap = 2002
university_of_washington / imap = 2002a
university_of_washington / imap = 2002b
university_of_washington / imap = 2002c
university_of_washington / imap = 2002d
university_of_washington / imap = 2002e
university_of_washington / imap = 2002f
university_of_washington / imap = 2004
university_of_washington / imap = 2004a
university_of_washington / imap = 2004b
university_of_washington / imap = 2004c
university_of_washington / imap = 2004d
university_of_washington / imap = 2004e
university_of_washington / imap = 2004f
university_of_washington / imap = 2004g
university_of_washington / imap = 2006
university_of_washington / imap = 2006a
university_of_washington / imap = 2006b
university_of_washington / imap = 2006c
university_of_washington / imap = 2006d
university_of_washington / imap = 2006e
university_of_washington / imap = 2006f
university_of_washington / imap = 2006g
university_of_washington / imap = 2006h
university_of_washington / imap = 2006i
university_of_washington / imap = 2006j
university_of_washington / imap = 2006k
university_of_washington / imap = 2007
university_of_washington / imap = 2007a
university_of_washington / imap = 2007b

Frequently Asked Questions

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.