SuSE: sendmail/sendmail-tls Remote vulnerability
Summary
______________________________________________________________________________
SuSE Security Announcement
Package: sendmail, sendmail-tls
Announcement-ID: SuSE-SA:2003:013
Date: Monday, March 3rd 2003, 18:10 MET
Affected products: 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 8.0, 8.1
SuSE Linux Database Server,
SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7, 8
SuSE Linux Firewall on CD/Admin host
SuSE Linux Connectivity Server
SuSE Linux Office Server
Vulnerability Type: local privilege escalation
Severity (1-10): 7
SuSE default package: yes (until SuSE Linux 8.0 and SLES7)
Cross References: 2003 CERT Advisories
Content of this advisory:
1) security vulnerability resolved: sendmail
problem description, discussion, solution and upgrade information
2) pending vulnerabilities, solutions, workarounds:
- vnc
- w3m
3) standard appendix (further information)
______________________________________________________________________________
1) problem description, brief discussion, solution, upgrade information
sendmail is the most widely used mail transport agent (MTA) in the
internet. A remotely exploitable buffer overflow has been found in all
versions of sendmail that come with SuSE products. These versions include
sendmail-8.11 and sendmail-8.12 releases. sendmail is the MTA subsystem
that is installed by default on all SuSE products up to and including
SuSE Linux 8.0 and the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7.
The vulnerability is triggered by an email message sent through the
sendmail MTA subsystem. In that respect, it is different from commonly
known bugs that occur in the context of an open TCP connection. By
consequence, the vulnerability also exists if email messages get forwarded
over a relay that itself does not run a vulnerable MTA. This specific
detail and the wide distribution of sendmail in the internet causes this
vulnerability to be considered an error of major severity.
The buffer overflow happens on the heap and is known to be exploitable.
As of the writing of this announcement, there is no exploit known to exist
in the public. Since there is no known workaround for this vulnerability
other than using a different MTA, it is strongly recommended to install
the update packages as offered at the locations as listed below.
We would like to express our gratitude to Eric Allman for notifying
SuSE Security of the problem. The vulnerability was discovered by
ISS Internet Security Systems, inc.
Please download the update package for your distribution and verify its
integrity by the methods listed in section 3) of this announcement.
Then, install the package using the command "rpm -Fhv file.rpm" to apply
the update.
Our maintenance customers are being notified individually. The packages
are being offered to install from the maintenance web.
SPECIAL INSTALL INSTRUCTIONS:
============================= After performing the update, it is necessary to restart all running
instances of sendmail using the command "rcsendmail restart" as root.
Intel i386 Platform:
SuSE-8.1:
0f3d981ad8e9be64bc70aff474ce303c
afe98a29de75ecd362fad5b02a922856
patch rpm(s):
ebd8f188748812aff2830b23de6f34b3
09ff6834c369051d165d78f01a44d684
source rpm(s):
50e471df3a90ce4b54b2c5ca3fbc081e
SuSE-8.0:
09e0a8ed5b189c7c819d3d38f74a07e1
72a8c31090299df6b7bd52ea38c31c2b
patch rpm(s):
905b39525ecd0506892b442a204b7aa3
a03e4a221c1fb8f2387dc133ada9e604
source rpm(s):
6e3106de72c4605d379dc2133adba97b
SuSE-7.3:
9d04ffb6a8d6f1fe6e2efe217de69ad7
ebf8d1b2ef233a68b0326e6ce6974994
source rpm(s):
aebf9a30089a13717928e9ba5309a6ed
371e39b10ee7d4c255e96e935c473aa8
SuSE-7.2:
dbff6db47875bc00a95409cba9498c49
7c7af39c8179219f6302707ab67bacea
source rpm(s):
85ff9f88013f6f0b23ed8fb15704bc82
7502589ff50b89f86398571c5686c23c
SuSE-7.1:
701f6c5d9748e0b9cd5606cdaaa84cd8
1583015b284c5166c9bd862c3e24bf14
source rpm(s):
b51e8383dc11ca9be65e05ee4209f740
3de4e382d512f6175cc5050d393d76a0
Sparc Platform:
SuSE-7.3:
0f70b263b09c319dcf698786b14de86f
e7a3f0c6fadcbaedc9736c2a7a08aa5f
source rpm(s):
1a455df96d094008fcd7bc96f49ab938
20d1fdca82189f4492a1dd28ba0d7e92
AXP Alpha Platform:
SuSE-7.1:
dfdd75f7e970002742135a5f48c9be71
ff6d0889f04eff5564c9e498954f9a85
source rpm(s):
92bd9eee0d1b9eac76f4835f4f20dfe2
a5e9e67a860bfd6b873cb9d95134405b
PPC Power PC Platform:
SuSE-7.3:
ef7b092c43dddc3fcdfa45946df42232
927355dfa069ad1f032a1036ad65fb2c
source rpm(s):
35c672698ccaa213c6e42b2888ac24ad
c1ff2ba2174ed85c47fad4149e82e564
SuSE-7.1:
d703b68846212626fdf1e1d3e15c733f
d98905aaa881fec5684f32ff1d4927de
source rpm(s):
b582465c56651e15153ad5a0239cea6a
f1ef3e9c0f346cf4e7c4f9f70b049878
______________________________________________________________________________
2) Pending vulnerabilities in SuSE Distributions and Workarounds:
- vnc
VNC (Virtual Network Computing) uses a weak cookie generation process
which can be exploited by an attacker to bypass authentication.
New packages are currently being tested and will be available on our
FTP servers soon.
- w3m
The textbased web-browser w3m does not properly escape HTML tags.
A malicious HTML page or img alt attribute may lead to information
leakage. New packages will be available soon.
______________________________________________________________________________
3) standard appendix: authenticity verification, additional information
- Package authenticity verification:
SuSE update packages are available on many mirror ftp servers all over
the world. While this service is being considered valuable and important
to the free and open source software community, many users wish to be
sure about the origin of the package and its content before installing
the package. There are two verification methods that can be used
independently from each other to prove the authenticity of a downloaded
file or rpm package:
1) md5sums as provided in the (cryptographically signed) announcement.
2) using the internal gpg signatures of the rpm package.
1) execute the command
md5sum
References
