sa-exim 4.2.1 allows attackers to execute arbitrary code if they can write a .cf file or a rule. This occurs because Greylisting.pm relies on eval (rather than direct parsing and/or use of the taint feature). This issue is similar to CVE-2018-11805.

The Linux/Unix host has one or more packages installed that are impacted by a vulnerability without a vendor supplied patch available.

  - sa-exim 4.2.1 allows attackers to execute arbitrary code if they can write a .cf file or a rule. This     occurs because Greylisting.pm relies on eval (rather than direct parsing and/or use of the taint feature).
    This issue is similar to CVE-2018-11805. (CVE-2019-19920)

Note that Nessus relies on the presence of the package as reported by the vendor.

The remote Ubuntu 16.04 LTS host has a package installed that is affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the USN-4520-1 advisory.

    It was discovered that Exim SpamAssassin does not properly handle

    configuration strings. An attacker could possibly use this issue to execute arbitrary code.
    (CVE-2019-19920)

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

It was found that sa-exim, the SpamAssassin filter for Exim, allows attackers to execute arbitrary code if users are allowed to run custom rules. A similar issue was fixed in spamassassin, CVE-2018-11805, which caused a functional regression in sa-exim. This update restores the compatibility between spamassassin and sa-exim. The security implications of sa-exim's greylisting function are also documented in /usr/share/doc/sa-exim/README.greylisting.gz.

For Debian 8 'Jessie', this problem has been fixed in version 4.2.1-14+deb8u1.

We recommend that you upgrade your sa-exim 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.

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
259087	Linux Distros Unpatched Vulnerability : CVE-2019-19920	Nessus	Misc.	high
140659	Ubuntu 16.04 LTS : Exim SpamAssassin vulnerability (USN-4520-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	high
132759	Debian DLA-2062-1 : sa-exim security update	Nessus	Debian Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2019-19920

high

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high