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[USN-2455-1] bsd-mailx vulnerability

Posted on 07 January 2015
Ubuntu Security

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Ubuntu Security Notice USN-2455-1
January 07, 2015

bsd-mailx vulnerability
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A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:

- Ubuntu 14.10
- Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
- Ubuntu 12.04 LTS
- Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Summary:

bsd-mailx could be made to run programs if it parsed a specially crafted
email address.

Software Description:
- bsd-mailx: simple mail user agent

Details:

It was discovered that bsd-mailx contained a feature that allowed
syntactically valid email addresses to be treated as shell commands. A
remote attacker could possibly use this issue with a valid email address =
to
execute arbitrary commands.

This functionality has now been disabled by default, and can be re-enable=
d
with the "expandaddr" configuration option. This update alone does not
remove all possibilities of command execution. In environments where
scripts use mailx to process arbitrary email addresses, it is recommended=

to modify them to use a "--" separator before the address to properly
handle those that begin with "-".

Update instructions:

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following
package versions:

Ubuntu 14.10:
bsd-mailx 8.1.2-0.20131005cvs-1ubuntu0.14.10.1

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS:
bsd-mailx 8.1.2-0.20131005cvs-1ubuntu0.14.04.1

Ubuntu 12.04 LTS:
bsd-mailx 8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1ubuntu0.1

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS:
bsd-mailx 8.1.2-0.20090911cvs-2ubuntu1.1

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.=


References:
http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-2455-1
CVE-2014-7844

Package Information:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bsd-mailx/8.1.2-0.20131005cvs-1ubunt=
u0.14.10.1

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bsd-mailx/8.1.2-0.20131005cvs-1ubunt=
u0.14.04.1
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bsd-mailx/8.1.2-0.20111106cvs-1ubu=
ntu0.1
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bsd-mailx/8.1.2-0.20090911cvs-2ubu=
ntu1.1

 

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