Sendmail 8.x.x - any user may rebuild aliases database

From: Michal Zalewski (lcamtufat_private)
Date: Sun Dec 12 1999 - 12:31:30 PST

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    Sendmail up to recent 8.9.x versions - any user may pass -bi parameter to
    /usr/sbin/sendmail. This will result in aliases database rebuild. IMHO
    there's no reason to allow such things, but no matter - something rather
    stupid is done during rebuild:
    
    5366  open("/etc/aliases.db", O_RDWR|O_TRUNC) = 6
    
    What a bad luck! There's approx 0.1 sec delay due to /etc/aliases
    processing (on my system). Meantime, luser might deliver any signals
    to sendmail process... SIGKILL is quite good. After that, /etc/aliases.db
    will be left in unusable state (no EOF marker), causing DoS:
    
    220 Marchew ESMTP Mail Service at nimue.ids.pl ready.
    mail from: myself
    451 Cannot open hash database /etc/aliases: Invalid argument
    rcpt to: lcamtuf
    503 Need MAIL before RCPT
    
    Exploit is trivial.
    
    _______________________________________________________________________
    Michal Zalewski [lcamtufat_private] [link / marchew] [dione.ids.pl SYSADM]
    [Marchew Industries] ! [http://lcamtuf.na.export.pl] bash$ :(){ :|:&};:
    [voice phone: +48 22 813 25 86] <=-=> [cellular phone: +48 501 4000 69]
    Iterowac jest rzecza ludzka, wykonywac rekursywnie - boska [P. Deutsch]
    



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