CentOS 3 / 4 / 5 : fetchmail (CESA-2009:1427)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 40893

Synopsis

The remote CentOS host is missing a security update.

Description

An updated fetchmail package that fixes multiple security issues is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5.

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

Fetchmail is a remote mail retrieval and forwarding utility intended for use over on-demand TCP/IP links, such as SLIP and PPP connections.

It was discovered that fetchmail is affected by the previously published 'null prefix attack', caused by incorrect handling of NULL characters in X.509 certificates. If an attacker is able to get a carefully-crafted certificate signed by a trusted Certificate Authority, the attacker could use the certificate during a man-in-the-middle attack and potentially confuse fetchmail into accepting it by mistake. (CVE-2009-2666)

A flaw was found in the way fetchmail handles rejections from a remote SMTP server when sending warning mail to the postmaster. If fetchmail sent a warning mail to the postmaster of an SMTP server and that SMTP server rejected it, fetchmail could crash. (CVE-2007-4565)

A flaw was found in fetchmail. When fetchmail is run in double verbose mode ('-v -v'), it could crash upon receiving certain, malformed mail messages with long headers. A remote attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service if fetchmail was also running in daemon mode ('-d'). (CVE-2008-2711)

Note: when using SSL-enabled services, it is recommended that the fetchmail '--sslcertck' option be used to enforce strict SSL certificate checking.

All fetchmail users should upgrade to this updated package, which contains backported patches to correct these issues. If fetchmail is running in daemon mode, it must be restarted for this update to take effect (use the 'fetchmail --quit' command to stop the fetchmail process).

Solution

Update the affected fetchmail package.

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 40893

File Name: centos_RHSA-2009-1427.nasl

Version: 1.19

Type: local

Agent: unix

Family: CentOS Local Security Checks

Published: 9/9/2009

Updated: 1/4/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.4

Temporal Score: 4.7

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

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:centos:centos:fetchmail, cpe:/o:centos:centos:3, cpe:/o:centos:centos:4, cpe:/o:centos:centos:5

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

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 10/30/2009

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/27/2007

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2007-4565, CVE-2008-2711, CVE-2009-2666

BID: 25495, 29705

CWE: 20, 310

RHSA: 2009:1427

Detections

Analytics