SquirrelMail 1.4.22 (and other versions before 20170427_0200-SVN) allows post-authentication remote code execution via a sendmail.cf file that is mishandled in a popen call. It's possible to exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary shell commands on the remote server. The problem is in the Deliver_SendMail.class.php with the initStream function that uses escapeshellcmd() to sanitize the sendmail command before executing it. The use of escapeshellcmd() is not correct in this case since it doesn't escape whitespaces, allowing the injection of arbitrary command parameters. The problem is in -f$envelopefrom within the sendmail command line. Hence, if the target server uses sendmail and SquirrelMail is configured to use it as a command-line program, it's possible to trick sendmail into using an attacker-provided configuration file that triggers the execution of an arbitrary command. For exploitation, the attacker must upload a sendmail.cf file as an email attachment, and inject the sendmail.cf filename with the -C option within the "Options > Personal Informations > Email Address" setting.

The remote Redhat Enterprise Linux 5 host has one or more packages installed that are affected by multiple vulnerabilities that have been acknowledged by the vendor but will not be patched.

  - squirrelmail: Insufficient escaping of user-supplied data (CVE-2017-7692)

  - squirrelmail: use of unserialize function for the mailtodata value in compose.php (CVE-2020-14932)

  - The mail message display page in SquirrelMail through 1.4.22 has XSS via a <svg><a xlink:href= attack.
    (CVE-2018-14950)

  - The mail message display page in SquirrelMail through 1.4.22 has XSS via a <form action='data:text     attack. (CVE-2018-14951)

  - The mail message display page in SquirrelMail through 1.4.22 has XSS via a <math><maction xlink:href=     attack. (CVE-2018-14952)

  - The mail message display page in SquirrelMail through 1.4.22 has XSS via a <math xlink:href= attack.
    (CVE-2018-14953)

  - The mail message display page in SquirrelMail through 1.4.22 has XSS via the formaction attribute.
    (CVE-2018-14954)

  - The mail message display page in SquirrelMail through 1.4.22 has XSS via SVG animations (animate to     attribute). (CVE-2018-14955)

  - A directory traversal flaw in SquirrelMail 1.4.22 allows an authenticated attacker to exfiltrate (or     potentially delete) files from the hosting server, related to ../ in the att_local_name field in     Deliver.class.php. (CVE-2018-8741)

  - XSS was discovered in SquirrelMail through 1.4.22 and 1.5.x through 1.5.2. Due to improper handling of     RCDATA and RAWTEXT type elements, the built-in sanitization mechanism can be bypassed. Malicious script     content from HTML e-mail can be executed within the application context via crafted use of (for example) a     NOEMBED, NOFRAMES, NOSCRIPT, or TEXTAREA element. (CVE-2019-12970)

  - compose.php in SquirrelMail 1.4.22 calls unserialize for the $attachments value, which originates from an     HTTP POST request. NOTE: the vendor disputes this because these two conditions for PHP object injection     are not satisfied: existence of a PHP magic method (such as __wakeup or __destruct), and any attack-     relevant classes must be declared before unserialize is called (or must be autoloaded). (CVE-2020-14933)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied on the package manager's report that the package is installed.

The remote host is affected by the vulnerability described in GLSA-201709-13 (SquirrelMail: Remote Code Execution)

    It was discovered that the sendmail.cf file is mishandled in a popen       call.
  Impact :

    A remote attacker, by enticing a user to open an e-mail attachment,       could execute arbitrary shell commands.
  Workaround :

    There is no known workaround at this time.

SquirrelMail developers report :

SquirrelMail 1.4.22 (and other versions before 20170427_0200-SVN) allows post-authentication remote code execution via a sendmail.cf file that is mishandled in a popen call. It's possible to exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary shell commands on the remote server.

fix insufficient escaping of user-supplied data (CVE-2017-7692)

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora update system website.
Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Dawid Golunski and Filippo Cavallarin discovered that squirrelmail, a webmail application, incorrectly handled a user-supplied value. This would allow a logged-in user to run arbitrary commands on the server.

For Debian 7 'Wheezy', these problems have been fixed in version 2:1.4.23~svn20120406-2+deb7u1.

We recommend that you upgrade your squirrelmail packages.

NOTE: Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the DLA security advisory. Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Dawid Golunski and Filippo Cavallarin discovered that squirrelmail, a webmail application, incorrectly handled a user-supplied value. This would allow a logged-in user to run arbitrary commands on the server.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
196861	RHEL 5 : squirrelmail (Unpatched Vulnerability)	Nessus	Red Hat Local Security Checks	critical
103281	GLSA-201709-13 : SquirrelMail: Remote Code Execution	Nessus	Gentoo Local Security Checks	high
102691	FreeBSD : SquirrelMail -- post-authentication remote code execution (e1de77e8-c45e-48d7-8866-5a6f943046de)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	high
101697	Fedora 26 : squirrelmail (2017-a7161eb173)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
100609	Fedora 25 : squirrelmail (2017-f85c37ae3d)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
100603	Fedora 24 : squirrelmail (2017-0b6da97aa5)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
100176	Debian DLA-941-1 : squirrelmail security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high
100166	Debian DSA-3852-1 : squirrelmail - security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2017-7692

high

Tenable Plugins

critical

high

high

high

high

high

high

high