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Debian Security Advisory DSA 3104-1 (bsd-mailx - security update)
Information
Severity
Severity
Family
Family
CVSSv2 Base
CVSSv2 Base
CVSSv2 Vector
CVSSv2 Vector
Solution Type
Solution Type
Created
Created
Modified
Modified
Summary
It was discovered that bsd-mailx, an implementation of the mail command, had an undocumented feature which treats syntactically valid email addresses as shell commands to execute. Users who need this feature can re-enable it using the expandaddr in an appropriate mailrc file. This update also removes the obsolete -T option. An older security vulnerability, CVE-2004-2771, had already been addressed in the Debian's bsd-mailx package. Note that this security update does not remove all mailx facilities for command execution, though. Scripts which send mail to addresses obtained from an untrusted source (such as a web form) should use the -- separator before the email addresses (which was fixed to work properly in this update), or they should be changed to invoke mail -t or sendmail -i -t instead, passing the recipient addresses as part of the mail header.
Affected Software
Affected Software
bsd-mailx on Debian Linux
Detection Method
Detection Method
This check tests the installed software version using the apt package manager.
Solution
Solution
For the stable distribution (wheezy), this problem has been fixed in version 8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1+deb7u1. We recommend that you upgrade your bsd-mailx packages.