Detections
Analytics

RHEL 5 : spamassassin (Unpatched Vulnerability)

high Nessus Plugin ID 199045

Synopsis

The remote Red Hat 5 host is affected by multiple vulnerabilities that will not be patched.

Description

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 host has one or more packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities that have been acknowledged by the vendor but will not be patched.

 - spamassassin: Local user code injection in the meta rule syntax (CVE-2018-11781)

 - 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. In Apache SpamAssassin, using HTML::Parser, we setup an object and hook into the begin and end tag event handlers In both cases, the open event is immediately followed by a close event - even if the tag *does not* close in the HTML being parsed. Because of this, we are missing the text event to deal with the object normally. This can cause carefully crafted emails that might take more scan time than expected leading to a Denial of Service. The issue is possibly a bug or design decision in HTML::Parser that specifically impacts the way Apache SpamAssassin uses the module with poorly formed html. The exploit has been seen in the wild but not believed to have been purposefully part of a Denial of Service attempt. We are concerned that there may be attempts to abuse the vulnerability in the future. (CVE-2017-15705)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied on the package manager's report that the package is installed.

Solution

The vendor has acknowledged the vulnerabilities but no solution has been provided. Refer to the vendor for remediation guidance.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 199045

File Name: redhat_unpatched_spamassassin-rhel5.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 6/3/2024

Updated: 6/3/2024

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 4.6

Temporal Score: 3.4

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2018-11781

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.8

Temporal Score: 6.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:redhat:enterprise_linux:spamassassin, cpe:/o:redhat:enterprise_linux:5

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/RedHat/release, Host/RedHat/rpm-list, Host/cpu

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/17/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2017-15705, CVE-2018-11781