Debian DLA-1578-1 : spamassassin security update

critical Nessus Plugin ID 118938

Synopsis

The remote Debian host is missing a security update.

Description

Multiple vulnerabilities were found in Spamassassin, which could lead to Remote Code Execution and Denial of Service attacks under certain circumstances.

CVE-2016-1238

Many Perl programs do not properly remove . (period) characters from the end of the includes directory array, which might allow local users to gain privileges via a Trojan horse module under the current working directory.

CVE-2017-15705

A denial of service vulnerability was identified that exists in Apache SpamAssassin before 3.4.2. The vulnerability arises with certain unclosed tags in emails that cause markup to be handled incorrectly leading to scan timeouts. This can cause carefully crafted emails that might take more scan time than expected leading to a Denial of Service.

CVE-2018-11780

A potential Remote Code Execution bug exists with the PDFInfo plugin in Apache SpamAssassin before 3.4.2.

CVE-2018-11781

Apache SpamAssassin 3.4.2 fixes a local user code injection in the meta rule syntax.

For Debian 8 'Jessie', these problems have been fixed in version 3.4.2-0+deb8u1. Upstream strongly advocates upgrading to the latest upstream version so we are following that recommendation and backported the version published as part of the 9.6 stretch release, which also fixes many critical bugs.

We recommend that you upgrade your spamassassin 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.

Solution

Upgrade the affected sa-compile, spamassassin, and spamc packages.

See Also

https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/11/msg00016.html

https://packages.debian.org/source/jessie/spamassassin

Plugin Details

Severity: Critical

ID: 118938

File Name: debian_DLA-1578.nasl

Version: 1.4

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 11/14/2018

Updated: 1/11/2021

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7.5

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Critical

Base Score: 9.8

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:sa-compile, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:spamassassin, p-cpe:/a:debian:debian_linux:spamc, cpe:/o:debian:debian_linux:8.0

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

Patch Publication Date: 11/13/2018

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2016-1238, CVE-2017-15705, CVE-2018-11780, CVE-2018-11781