CVE-2006-0040
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedGNOME Evolution 2.4.2.1 and earlier allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU and memory consumption) via a text e-mail with a large number of URLs, possibly due to unknown problems in gtkhtml.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · moderate confidenceGNOME Evolution 2.4.2.1 and earlier contains a denial of service vulnerability where processing a specially crafted text email containing a large number of URLs causes excessive CPU and memory consumption, likely due to insufficient resource handling or algorithmic complexity issues in the gtkhtml component when rendering HTML content.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data= 2.4.2.1CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Network
- Complexity
- Low
- Authentication
- None
- Confidentiality
- None
- Integrity
- None
- Availability
- Partial
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Verify GNOME Evolution is installedRun command: dpkg -l | grep evolution or rpm -q evolution or which evolutionAffected if GNOME Evolution is not installed on the system
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Determine installed Evolution versionRun command: evolution --version or check package manager output (dpkg -l evolution or rpm -qi evolution)Affected if Version is 2.4.2.1 or earlier (including 2.4.0, 2.3.x, 2.2.x and earlier releases)
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Confirm HTML email rendering is enabledCheck Evolution preferences: Edit > Preferences > Mail Preferences > HTML Mail; or inspect ~/.gconf/apps/evolution/mail/%gconf.xml for html-mail-visible settingAffected if HTML mail rendering is enabled (the gtkhtml component processes HTML content when this setting is active)
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Identify incoming mail handling configurationCheck Evolution mail accounts configuration for HTML handling policy: Accounts > Edit > Receiving Options > Display HTML instead of plain textAffected if The system is configured to automatically render HTML emails (enabling the gtkhtml vulnerability path)
User is affected if GNOME Evolution version 2.4.2.1 or earlier is installed AND HTML email rendering is enabled, allowing gtkhtml to process incoming HTML emails containing excessive URLs.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataUpgrade to a patched version of GNOME Evolution that addresses this vulnerability. If upgrading is not feasible, consider filtering or limiting the number of URLs in incoming emails at the MTA/gateway level.
- Consultation3.0 h
- Implementation6.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2006-0040 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2006-0040 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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A place for practitioners to share what actually worked: a mitigation you’ve tested, a configuration change, a version- or environment-specific caveat, or a link to a verified patch. The most useful notes rise to the top as peers upvote them, so the signal stays high.
- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
- No spam, self-promotion, credentials, or personal data