Debian DLA-320-1 : libemail-address-perl security update

high Nessus Plugin ID 86212

Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security update.

Description

Pali Rohár discovered [1] a possible DoS attack in any software which uses the Email::Address Perl module for parsing string input to a list of email addresses.

By default Email::Address module, version v1.907 (and all before) tries to understand nestable comments in an input string with depth level 2.

With specially crafted inputs, parsing nestable comments can become too slow and can cause high CPU load, freeze the application and end in Denial of Service.

Because input strings for Email::Address module come from external sources (e.g. from email sent by an attacker) it is a security problem impacting on all software applications which parse email messages using the Email::Address Perl module.

With this upload of libemail-address-perl, the default value of nestable comments has been set to depth level 1 (as proposed by upstream). Please note that this is not proper a fix, just a workaround for pathological inputs with nestable comments.

[1] http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/09/27/1

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.

Solution

Upgrade the affected libemail-address-perl package.

See Also

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2015/09/27/1

https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2015/09/msg00016.html

https://packages.debian.org/source/squeeze-lts/libemail-address-perl

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 86212

File Name: debian_DLA-320.nasl

Version: 2.5

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 10/1/2015

Updated: 1/11/2021

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Nessus

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:libemail-address-perl, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:6.0

Required KB Items: Host/local_checks_enabled, Host/Debian/release, Host/Debian/dpkg-l

Patch Publication Date: 9/30/2015