Debian LTS Advisory ([SECURITY] [DLA 1578-1] spamassassin security update)

Multiple vulnerabilities were found in Spamassassin, which could lead to Remote Code Execution and Denial of Service attacks under certain circumstances. CVE-2016-1238 Many Perl programs do not properly remove . (period) characters from the end of the includes directory array, which might allow local users to gain privileges via a Trojan horse module under the current working directory. CVE-2017-15705 A denial of service vulnerability was identified that exists in Apache SpamAssassin before 3.4.2. The vulnerability arises with certain unclosed tags in emails that cause markup to be handled incorrectly leading to scan timeouts. This can cause carefully crafted emails that might take more scan time than expected leading to a Denial of Service. CVE-2018-11780 A potential Remote Code Execution bug exists with the PDFInfo plugin in Apache SpamAssassin before 3.4.2. CVE-2018-11781 Apache SpamAssassin 3.4.2 fixes a local user code injection in the meta rule syntax.

spamassassin on Debian Linux

This check tests the installed software version using the apt package manager.

For Debian 8 'Jessie', these problems have been fixed in version 3.4.2-0+deb8u1. Upstream strongly advocates upgrading to the latest upstream version so we are following that recommendation and backported the version published as part of the 9.6 stretch release, which also fixes many critical bugs. We recommend that you upgrade your spamassassin packages.