Remote Vulnerability in the MMDF SMTP Daemon

From: NAI Labs (seclabsat_private)
Date: Wed Feb 16 2000 - 10:55:42 PST

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    ======================================================================
    
                         Network Associates, Inc.
                            SECURITY ADVISORY
                            February 15, 2000
    
               Remote Vulnerability in the MMDF SMTP Daemon
    
    ======================================================================
    
    SYNOPSIS
    
    An implementation fault in MMDF allows arbitrary individuals to
    obtain mail management privileges via the SMTP daemon.  An attacker
    can subsequently gain root access via a few trivial steps.
    
    ======================================================================
    
    VULNERABLE HOSTS
    
    This vulnerability has been confirmed and is known to be exploitable
    on all versions of MMDF prior to the beta release 2.44a-B4 (The
    current public release is 2.43).  The version of MMDF included in the
    default SCO OpenServer installation (2.43.3b) is also vulnerable.
    
    ======================================================================
    
    TECHNICAL DETAILS
    
    The "MAIL FROM:" and "RCPT TO:" SMTP commands exist to allow a client
    to relay to the server the source and destination addresses of a mail
    message.  The MMDF server performs some basic sanity checks on the
    addresses given as arguments to these commands.  If the supplied data
    is for some reason invalid, an error message to that effect is
    printed.  During this process, the entire input string is copied to a
    fixed-size local buffer without any bounds checking, using the
    function sprintf().  Should the size of the input exceed the size of
    this buffer, the call stack of the MMDF server can be overwritten.
    While MMDF's "RCPT TO:" handling code performs checks on the address
    which make exploitation impossible, the "MAIL FROM:" command has no
    such checking and is easily exploitable.
    
    Although the MMDF server is run as the unprivileged user mmdf by
    inetd, the 'smptd' binary is setuid root and is stored in a directory
    owned by user mmdf.  This allows an attacker to execute commands as
    root by replacing the 'smtpsrvr' binary with an arbitrary program or
    script.
    
    ======================================================================
    
    RESOLUTION
    
    SCO has developed a patch to address this issue.  More information is
    available at:  http://www.sco.com/security.
    
    Because of the remotely exploitable nature of this vulnerability,
    this is considered to be a high risk to users of MMDF and should be
    resolved immediately.
    
    ======================================================================
    
    CREDITS
    
    Discovery and documentation of this vulnerability was conducted by
    Shawn Bracken at the Security Research Labs of Network Associates.
    
    ======================================================================
    
    ABOUT THE NETWORK ASSOCIATES SECURITY LABS
    
    The Security Labs at Network Associates hosts some of the most
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    advisories published in the last 2 years, the Network Associates
    security research teams have been responsible for the discovery of
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    For more information about the Security Labs at Network
    Associates, see our website at http://www.nai.com or contact us
    at <seclabsat_private>.
    
    ======================================================================
    
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