SpamAssassin 2.5x, and 2.6x before 2.64, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via certain malformed messages.

An updated spamassassin package that fixes a denial of service bug when parsing malformed messages is now available.

SpamAssassin provides a way to reduce unsolicited commercial email (SPAM) from incoming email.

A denial of service bug has been found in SpamAssassin versions below 2.64. A malicious attacker could construct a message in such a way that would cause spamassassin to stop responding, potentially preventing the delivery or filtering of email. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has assigned the name CVE-2004-0796 to this issue.

Users of SpamAssassin should update to these updated packages which contain a backported patch and is not vulnerable to this issue.

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-200408-06 (SpamAssassin: Denial of Service vulnerability)

    SpamAssassin contains an unspecified Denial of Service vulnerability.
  Impact :

    By sending a specially crafted message an attacker could cause a Denial     of Service attack against the SpamAssassin service.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time. All users are encouraged to     upgrade to the latest available version of SpamAssassin.

According to the SpamAssassin 2.64 release announcement :

Security fix prevents a denial of service attack open to certain malformed messages; this DoS affects all SpamAssassin 2.5x and 2.6x versions to date.

The issue appears to be triggered by overly long message headers.

Security fix prevents a denial of service attack open to certain malformed messages; this DoS affects all SpamAssassin 2.5x and 2.6x versions to date.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
15411	RHEL 3 : spamassassin (RHSA-2004:451)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	medium
14562	GLSA-200408-06 : SpamAssassin: Denial of Service vulnerability	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	medium
14345	FreeBSD : SpamAssassin -- denial-of-service in tokenize_headers (0d3a5148-f512-11d8-9837-000c41e2cdad)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	medium
14333	Mandrake Linux Security Advisory : spamassassin (MDKSA-2004:084)	Nessus	Mandriva Local Security Checks	medium

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2004-0796

high

Tenable Plugins

medium

medium

medium

medium