CentOS 6 / 7 : mailx (CESA-2014:1999)

high Nessus Plugin ID 80056

Synopsis

The remote CentOS host is missing a security update.

Description

Updated mailx packages that fix two security issues are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7.

Red Hat Product Security has rated this update as having Moderate security impact. Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) base scores, which give detailed severity ratings, are available for each vulnerability from the CVE links in the References section.

The mailx packages contain a mail user agent that is used to manage mail using scripts.

A flaw was found in the way mailx handled the parsing of email addresses. A syntactically valid email address could allow a local attacker to cause mailx to execute arbitrary shell commands through shell meta-characters and the direct command execution functionality.
(CVE-2004-2771, CVE-2014-7844)

Note: Applications using mailx to send email to addresses obtained from untrusted sources will still remain vulnerable to other attacks if they accept email addresses which start with '-' (so that they can be confused with mailx options). To counteract this issue, this update also introduces the '--' option, which will treat the remaining command line arguments as email addresses.

All mailx users are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which contain backported patches to correct these issues.

Solution

Update the affected mailx package.

See Also

http://www.nessus.org/u?a27cf2de

http://www.nessus.org/u?ee434079

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 80056

File Name: centos_RHSA-2014-1999.nasl

Version: 1.13

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 12/17/2014

Updated: 1/4/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Temporal Score: 5.5

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2004-2771

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:centos:centos:mailx, cpe:/o:centos:centos:7, cpe:/o:centos:centos:6

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

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 12/16/2014

Vulnerability Publication Date: 12/24/2014

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2004-2771, CVE-2014-7844

BID: 71701, 71704

RHSA: 2014:1999