GHSA-f2hq-32vh-53cc - postal-mime: Quadratic CPU consumption when decoding a header of many joinable RFC 2047 base64 encoded words
### Impact
Decoding a header that holds a long run of joinable RFC 2047 base64 encoded words, such as `=?utf-8?B?QUJD?=` repeated tens of thousands of times in a `Subject`, `From`, `To`, a filename or a description, took time quadratic in the number of words. The join check ran a regex over the text joined so far for every word, which flattens the accumulated string each time. A single well formed message of about 1.6 MB blocked the event loop for one to twenty seconds depending on the host, and inline `message/rfc822` parts multiplied the cost, since each nested message carried its own header budget.
Any application that parses untrusted mail with postal-mime 3.0.0 through 4.0.7, including the exported `decodeWords()` helper, is affected. There is no confidentiality or integrity impact.
### Patches
Fixed in 4.0.8. The pad check now tracks the last appended word instead of testing the joined text, so decoding is linear in the header length. The same release also counts the parts and header bytes of inline `message/rfc822` sub-messages against the limits of the message as a whole, counts every header line for at least 64 bytes of `maxHeadersSize`, and adds a scaling test that measures every stage of the parser at two input sizes.
### Workarounds
Lower `maxHeadersSize` from its 2 MiB default to bound the cost per message, or parse untrusted mail in a worker that can be terminated.
### Credits
Reported by Felipe Fernández.
HIGH
Severity & confidence
Source severityhigh
Platform severityhigh
Confidencemedium
Exploitationunknown
CVSS7.5
Affected
Vendorspostal-mime
Productspostal-mime
Reporting sources (1)
GitHub Security Advisories
Timeline & provenance
Published2026-10-23T21:54:36
Last updated2026-10-27T18:57:27
Ingested2026-10-23T22:03:29
FreshnessNEAR-REAL-TIME
Threat typeadvisory
Recommended action
Review the advisory and upgrade affected packages to the first patched version.
Next steps
- Identify affected systems in your environment.
- Apply the vendor patch or mitigation guidance.
- Review logs for indicators described in the advisory.
- Follow the affected vendor/product to track updates.
Confidence explanation
Reported by a single or secondary source; treat as indicative, verify before acting.
Source type: vendor · Original: GitHub Security Advisories