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Ubuntu 14.04 LTS : Exim vulnerabilities (USN-2933-1)

high Nessus Plugin ID 89962

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Synopsis

The remote Ubuntu host is missing one or more security updates.

Description

It was discovered that Exim incorrectly filtered environment variables when used with the perl_startup configuration option. If the perl_startup option was enabled, a local attacker could use this issue to escalate their privileges to the root user. This issue has been fixed by having Exim clean the complete execution environment by default on startup, including any subprocesses such as transports that call other programs. This change in behaviour may break existing installations and can be adjusted by using two new configuration options, keep_environment and add_environment. (CVE-2016-1531)

Patrick William discovered that Exim incorrectly expanded mathematical comparisons twice. A local attacker could possibly use this issue to perform arbitrary file operations as the Exim user. This issue only affected Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. (CVE-2014-2972).

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

Solution

Update the affected packages.

See Also

https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-2933-1

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 89962

File Name: ubuntu_USN-2933-1.nasl

Version: 2.17

Type: local

Agent: unix

Published: 3/16/2016

Updated: 10/20/2023

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

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: High

Score: 7.4

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.9

Temporal Score: 5.7

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

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2016-1531

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 7

Temporal Score: 6.5

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

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:F/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:exim4-daemon-heavy, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:exim4-daemon-light, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:exim4-dev, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:eximon4, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:14.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:exim4, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:exim4-base, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:exim4-config

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

Exploit Available: true

Exploit Ease: Exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 3/15/2016

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/4/2014

Exploitable With

Core Impact

Metasploit (Exim "perl_startup" Privilege Escalation)

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2014-2972, CVE-2016-1531

USN: 2933-1