Buffer overflow in Metamail 2.7-50 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via e-mail messages with a long boundary attribute, a different vulnerability than CVE-2004-0105.

Ulf Harnhammar discovered a buffer overflow in metamail, an implementation of MIME (Multi-purpose Internet Mail Extensions), that could lead to a denial of service or potentially execute arbitrary code when processing messages.

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200603-16 (Metamail: Buffer overflow)

    Ulf Harnhammar discovered a buffer overflow in Metamail when     processing mime boundaries.
  Impact :

    By sending a specially crafted email, attackers could potentially     exploit this vulnerability to crash Metamail or to execute arbitrary     code.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

Ulf Harnhammar discovered a buffer overflow vulnerability in the way that metamail handles certain mail messages. An attacker could create a carefully-crafted message that, when parsed via metamail, could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user running metamail.

The updated packages have been patched to address this issue.

An updated metamail package that fixes a buffer overflow vulnerability for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 is now available.

This update has been rated as having important security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

Metamail is a system for handling multimedia mail.

A buffer overflow bug was found in the way Metamail processes certain mail messages. An attacker could create a carefully-crafted message such that when it is opened by a victim and parsed through Metamail, it runs arbitrary code as the victim. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) assigned the name CVE-2006-0709 to this issue.

Users of Metamail should upgrade to this updated package, which contains a backported patch that is not vulnerable to this issue.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
22861	Debian DSA-995-1 : metamail - buffer overflow	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high
21097	GLSA-200603-16 : Metamail: Buffer overflow	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	high
20981	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : metamail (MDKSA-2006:047)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	high
20966	RHEL 2.1 : metamail (RHSA-2006:0217)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2006-0709

critical

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high

high