Exim SPA Authentication Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

BID:12188

Info

Exim SPA Authentication Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Bugtraq ID: 12188
Class: Boundary Condition Error
CVE: CVE-2005-0022
Remote: Yes
Local: No
Published: Jan 06 2005 12:00AM
Updated: Jul 12 2009 09:27AM
Credit: Discovery is credited to an anonymous source.
Vulnerable: University of Cambridge Exim 4.43
University of Cambridge Exim 4.42
University of Cambridge Exim 4.41
University of Cambridge Exim 4.40
University of Cambridge Exim 4.34
+ Ubuntu Ubuntu Linux 4.1 ppc
 + Ubuntu Ubuntu Linux 4.1 ia64
 + Ubuntu Ubuntu Linux 4.1 ia32
 University of Cambridge Exim 4.33
University of Cambridge Exim 4.32
University of Cambridge Exim 4.21
University of Cambridge Exim 4.20
University of Cambridge Exim 4.10
SuSE Linux 8.1
SuSE Linux 8.0 i386
SuSE Linux 8.0
S.u.S.E. Linux Personal 9.2
S.u.S.E. Linux Personal 9.1
S.u.S.E. Linux Personal 9.0 x86_64
S.u.S.E. Linux Personal 9.0
S.u.S.E. Linux Personal 8.2
Redhat Fedora Core3
Redhat Fedora Core2
ALT Linux ALT Linux Junior 2.3
ALT Linux ALT Linux Compact 2.3
Not Vulnerable:

Discussion

Exim SPA Authentication Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Exim is reported susceptible to a buffer overflow vulnerability when attempting to authenticate remote users via SPA. This issue is due to a failure of the application to properly bounds check user-supplied input prior to copying it to a fixed-size memory buffer.

This vulnerability reportedly allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code in the context of the affected server application. This issue is only exploitable if SPA authentication is configured to be used. SPA authentication is not enabled by default.

Exploit / POC

Exim SPA Authentication Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Exploit code is available.

Solution / Fix

Exim SPA Authentication Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

Solution:
The vendor has released patches, and a snapshot version of Exim to address this issue. These patches are for version 4.43 of Exim, but the vendor has reported that they may also work for previous versions.

The patches can be extracted from the referenced email message from Philip Hazel.

SuSE Linux has released a security summary report (SUSE-SR:2005:002) that contains fixes to address this and other vulnerabilities. Customers are advised to peruse the referenced advisory for further information regarding obtaining and applying appropriate updates.

RedHat has released two advisories called FEDORA-2005-001 to address this, and other issues for Fedora Core 2 and 3. Please see the referenced advisories for further information.

Ubuntu has released advisory USN-56-1 to address this issue. Please see the attached advisory for further information on obtaining and applying fixes.

Gentoo has released an advisory GLSA 200501-23 to address issues in Exim. Please see the referenced advisory for more information. Gentoo users may carry out the following commands to update their computers:

emerge --sync
emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=mail-mta/exim-4.43-r2"

ALT Linux has released updates dealing with this and other issues. Please see the reference section for more information.


University of Cambridge Exim 4.10

University of Cambridge Exim 4.20

University of Cambridge Exim 4.21

University of Cambridge Exim 4.32

University of Cambridge Exim 4.33

University of Cambridge Exim 4.34

University of Cambridge Exim 4.40

University of Cambridge Exim 4.41

University of Cambridge Exim 4.42

University of Cambridge Exim 4.43

References

Exim SPA Authentication Remote Buffer Overflow Vulnerability

References:
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