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Questions tagged [imap]

Internet Message Access Protocol, or IMAP, is a mail protocol used in the retrieval of mail from a mailbox. In comparison to POP, IMAP is designed to allow the complete management of a mailbox using multiple different mail clients, this means that unlike POP, mail retrieved over the IMAP protocol will by default also remain on the mail server, unless explicitly deleted by the user.

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How do junk/spam mails get the "current" timestamp applied?

Whenever I open my email client (Thunderbird), I see some junk mails that have the timestamp of the exact moment, when my client downloaded them via IMAP. So emails with the exact same timestamp of ...
stackprotector's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
124 views

Is it possible for an attacker to change an email-attachment of a received email client-side and synchronize it via IMAP with Webmailer?

an attacker manipulated the IBAN of an invoice.pdf attached to a received email. The question remains, can said attacker manipulate/change such a pdf client-side and cause an IMAP synchronization with ...
frank's user avatar
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0 votes
2 answers
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What does the IMAP banner alone show regarding security (STARTTLS, hashing, information disclosure)?

I encountered an open TCP/143 IMAP port which responded with this banner: * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE IDLE LITERAL+ STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN AUTH=LOGIN AUTH=DIGEST-MD5 AUTH=...
Bob Ortiz's user avatar
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CNAME redirection and certificate

As an experiment, I attempted to setup a CNAME for mail.mydomain.com pointing to mail.myisp.com, and using mail.mydomain.com instead of mail.myisp.com in setting up email clients connecting to that ...
fgrieu's user avatar
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536 views

Genuine security of IMAP vs Exchange Active Sync mail access

I agree that - as always - having two protocols available potentially offers a greater attack surface than either of them. I know Active Sync allows to enforce organisational admin capabilities to ...
Martin's user avatar
  • 335
0 votes
1 answer
571 views

IMAP credentials in WEB (browser) app - how to use securely

I need to send and check email (via IMAP email servers) from my web app. Storing credentials on server seems like problem as they are almost always plain text. So if I store them in client browser's ...
beliaban's user avatar
1 vote
0 answers
181 views

Strange cyrus/imaps Logins without valid password

I found apparently successful logins from a foreign ip-address to our cyrus-imap server: Nov 24 08:16:20 server-1 cyrus/imaps[12101]: starttls: TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits ...
mko's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
466 views

Open IMAP connection using hashed password

I make email client over IMAP protocol. To "remember" user's connection details (email, password, host, etc.) I need to store password in plain text, because otherwise I won't be able to ...
ivanjermakov's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

Could IMAP authentication be adapted to support 2FA?

Theoretically? (If no, why? And if yes, why hasn't it been done?)
user664833's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
748 views

Why Thunderbird has private IP address as remote host?

Why Mozilla Thunderbird configured to access Yahoo IMAP server, uses a private IP address, even if there is no other device in the network. Every time, Thunderbird is restarted, it changes remote-host ...
Jagjeet Sharma's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
368 views

Anything wrong with using IMAP as authentication for a web app to achieve a kind of easy SSO?

The idea would be to wrap a server-side IMAP client in a wrapper that transforms IMAP authentication into a web API for authentication (maybe OAuth?). When the back-end application receives ...
Robert Talada's user avatar
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1 answer
148 views

Email including self-shredding macro after "Seen" flag is set

Bob sent an email to Alice with nothing much useful and tenuous ( but because it isn't useful it can ruin Bob's reputation if bad Alice decide to publish. ) Is there a way for Bob to include a ...
guest's user avatar
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39 votes
2 answers
12k views

How do email clients "send later" without storing a password?

Email clients like Spark for macOS have a feature where a user can send an email later, at any given time, even when the computer is turned off. An SMTP server needs a password based authentication, ...
NikxDa's user avatar
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Watch Encrypted IMAP Responses

I'm trying to see if I can decipher the messages coming back from Exchange when I try and login via secure IMAP. My office 365 accounts are under attack and I've disabled IMAP (and legacy login) but ...
Sean's user avatar
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7 votes
2 answers
2k views

Outlook for Android uses intermediate Microsoft Servers

I have an IMAP + SMTP server running on linux, using Dovecot + Postfix. The server only accepts connections over TLS and uses plaintext authentication once the tunnel is established. I was auditing ...
user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
170 views

Domain offline - are unmaintained email clients a security risk?

I have just unregistered a domain. Now my mail client (Thunderbird) popped up a message saying that it cannot connect to the mail server. That's fine - for the moment. However, I wonder what would ...
Thomas Weller's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
10k views

Risks in open POP3/IMAP ports?

I found a domain with open POP3 (110) and IMAP (143) ports. I was able to use TELNET to connect to them successfully, but beyond this is there any common vulnerability/exploit I should test on them, ...
Jack's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
2k views

Finding and attacking an IMAP Server

For a security challenge I am supposed to dictionary attack an IMAP service. A rather simple exercise using hydra. So far I failed, since I've given hydra the actual website instead of the mail ...
Mr.Sh4nnon's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why do OpenSSL and Python return different SSL fingerprints?

I use getmail, a tool written in Python, to retrieve my mail via IMAP. Today it suddenly stopped working because it complains about an SSL fingerprint mismatch. (I always specify the fingerprint to ...
Psychonaut's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
198 views

How to single key decrypt pgp encrypted mails in a multi key/multi identitiy setup?

For pgp encryption I'd like to combine short expiry terms for public signing and email encryption with (convenient) long term decryption possibilities of my mailbox mails. I'm using several mail ...
walfi's user avatar
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16 votes
4 answers
16k views

Does IMAP/POP3/ASP undermine Two-Factor Auth?

When I log in to hotmail or Google or posteo I can only log in using the 2FA that I have set up. However, each provider seems to have an alternative for apps that do not auth via a web client. ...
CCXD's user avatar
  • 161
8 votes
2 answers
2k views

Why are common services using implicit SSL not considered obsolete in the way that SMTPS is?

SMTPS (implicit SSL) has been deprecated/obsolete since SMTP+STARTTLS (explicit SSL) was defined in RFC2487. I'm not entirely clear on the reasoning behind that, but it was clearly considered a good ...
Synchro's user avatar
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0 votes
1 answer
551 views

What security settings is Yahoo Mail looking for to consider IMAP client secure?

When setting up an IMAP client for Yahoo Mail, Yahoo requires the "Allow apps that use less secure signin" option to be enabled. The client is configured to use SSL for IMAP (and SMTP). What ...
Amazon Dies In Darkness's user avatar
6 votes
3 answers
2k views

Better safety: Webmail or POP3/IMAP email client?

Which offers a higher level of safety: Webmail or using a POP3/IMAP client? Assume the following for webmail: Access via HTTPS Rarely downloading any attachments, but in cases where it may be ...
Amazon Dies In Darkness's user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
250 views

IMAP with authentication set to none

While adding a Mediacom email account into Apple Mail I referenced their page on IMAP settings https://supportstage.mediacomcable.com/print/1446, I noticed that authentication type for incoming email ...
traisjames's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
2k views

What is the purpose of opportunistic TLS (like STARTTLS)?

Opportunistic TLS refers to extensions in plain text communication protocols, which offer a way to upgrade a plain text connection to an encrypted (TLS or SSL) connection instead of using a separate ...
Bob Ortiz's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
307 views

Why does my password appear in clear text with my smartphone mail IMAP application?

I am using the default Galaxy 5 mail application to fetch my mail with IMAP. Packet capture shows my user and password in clear text (see below). Why does my username and password appear in clear ...
user avatar
0 votes
1 answer
522 views

Random persistent Gmail password requests from Google

I am trying to figure out something for my father in law. This persistent popup keeps interrupting anything anyone is doing on his desktop by requesting he put in his password. I told him not to. It ...
Claire's user avatar
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0 votes
2 answers
124 views

Reconcile IMAP4 RFC with No RC4 RFC

RFC 3501 states: IMAP client and server implementations MUST implement the TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_MD5. RFC 7465 states: o TLS clients MUST NOT include RC4 cipher suites in the ClientHello message o ...
Swashbuckler's user avatar
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3 votes
0 answers
564 views

How secure is PHP IMAP? [closed]

I'm working on a project for one of my customers. They want a web environment where the site searches for specific emails for specific users and makes the attachments of those emails accessible to ...
LesleyTYap's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
988 views

How does Google store passwords for remote IMAP/POP services?

It is possible to add non-Google accounts to Gmail and retrieve their mail messages via POP or IMAP. As part of the setup process, one has to provide the login username and password for these accounts....
WoJ's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why doesn't outlook 2013 meet modern security standards?

It is required to turn on the allow less secure apps setting in order to be able to use a gmail account with outlook 2013, despite it is using the IMAP and SMTP services with SSL protocol enabled. ...
ncomputers's user avatar
8 votes
2 answers
644 views

How can I track someone logged in my gmail account over imap?

Gmail tells me if someone new logged in to the web-interface (device, browser etc.) But what about IMAP logins? If someone has my password can he stealthy read my mails over IMAP?
Denis Steif's user avatar
3 votes
2 answers
476 views

Reading mail from GMail with secure access

I recently implemented PHP code with IMAP for reading mails from a GMail account and further executing some command depending on the mail body. I got this to work after consulting the first answer ...
Prathiba's user avatar
5 votes
0 answers
606 views

Should I force Thunderbird to avoid RFC5746 and CVE-2009-3555 security bugs?

I see that the latest version of Thunderbird (38.0.1) still has the defaults set to ignore the error. Is this a big problem? Should I change the defaults to enforce greater security? Here is ...
Chloe's user avatar
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3 votes
3 answers
605 views

How webmail's authorisation should work?

I'm building a webmail client (like gmail). It allows the user to browse emails and send them. Under the hood, php uses IMAP and SMTP to talk with email server. user->webserver->mailserver When user ...
user3702861's user avatar
2 votes
3 answers
567 views

Fake "FROM" email to allocate to account

We are allocating emails to their online account. We discovered you can send a false email with a script by changing the "from" or "reply-to" in the email header. There must be a safe way to test the ...
Saul Frank's user avatar
-1 votes
1 answer
1k views

Why not use md5 auth mechanisms for IMAP over TLS?

I'm using Dovecot for IMAP connections. I've read a lot of tutorials on how to set up Dovecot, and a lot of them said to only allow: auth_mechanisms = plain login Why should I not allow *-md5 ...
Ben Richard's user avatar
  • 3,876
1 vote
1 answer
3k views

Is my Postfix and Dovecot configuration secure?

Today I set up my first server with Dovecot and Postfix. These are excerpts from the configuration files: Dovecot: disable_plaintext_auth = yes ssl = required ssl_prefer_server_ciphers = yes ...
Ben Richard's user avatar
  • 3,876
3 votes
1 answer
272 views

Opening mail from IMAP with no risk for the user

I'm building a website for an association. Its aim is to, out of other thing, provide an easy mail manager to communicate with the member, stored in a database. This database is always up to date as ...
Remy San's user avatar
  • 131
80 votes
3 answers
88k views

What are the dangers of allowing "less secure apps" to access my Google account?

According to https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255: Google may block sign in attempts from some apps or devices that do not use modern security standards. Since these apps and devices ...
Hjulle's user avatar
  • 906
11 votes
3 answers
15k views

How to store passwords securely in my server?

Disclaimer: I know I should use bcrypt to securely store user's passwords. Please, keep reading. I want to store credentials for several email services for each user. So if I log in with my username ...
Francisco Presencia's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
2k views

Do the BEAST and CRIME attacks apply to an IMAP service?

While setting up the Dovecot IMAP service, I noticed that the default parameters are not optimal, it allows SSLv3 for example. Using Thomas Pournin's TestSSLServer.java program, I saw the following: ....
Lekensteyn's user avatar
  • 6,098
1 vote
1 answer
2k views

Distributed IMAP-Dictionary-Attack-Tool?

I have a client with a hacked IMAP-Account, and the attacker(s) made thousands of password-attempts, probably with a fixed set of passwords, from different IPs before they got in. After successful ...
that guy from over there's user avatar