Debian Security Advisory

mailx -- mail group exploit in mailx

Date Reported:

05 Jun 2000

Affected Packages:

mailx

Vulnerable:

Yes

Security database references:

In Mitre's CVE dictionary: CVE-2000-0545.

More information:

The version of mailx distributed in Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 (a.k.a. slink), as well as in the frozen (potato) and unstable (woody) distributions is vulnerable to a local buffer overflow while sending messages. This could be exploited to give a shell running with group "mail". This has been fixed in version 8.1.1-10.1, and we recommend that you update your mailx package immediately.

Fixed in:

Debian GNU/Linux 2.1 (slink)

Source:: http://security.debian.org/dists/slink/updates/source/mailx_8.1.1-10.1.diff.gz; http://security.debian.org/dists/slink/updates/source/mailx_8.1.1-10.1.dsc; http://security.debian.org/dists/slink/updates/source/mailx_8.1.1.orig.tar.gz
alpha:: http://security.debian.org/dists/slink/updates/binary-alpha/mailx_8.1.1-10.1_alpha.deb
i386:: http://security.debian.org/dists/slink/updates/binary-i386/mailx_8.1.1-10.1_i386.deb
m68k:: http://security.debian.org/dists/slink/updates/binary-m68k/mailx_8.1.1-10.1_m68k.deb
sparc:: http://security.debian.org/dists/slink/updates/binary-sparc/mailx_8.1.1-10.1_sparc.deb

Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (potato)

Source:: http://security.debian.org/dists/potato/main/updates/source/mailx_8.1.1-10.1.diff.gz; http://security.debian.org/dists/potato/main/updates/source/mailx_8.1.1-10.1.dsc; http://security.debian.org/dists/potato/main/updates/source/mailx_8.1.1.orig.tar.gz
alpha:: http://security.debian.org/dists/potato/main/updates/binary-alpha/mailx_8.1.1-10.1_alpha.deb
i386:: http://security.debian.org/dists/potato/main/updates/binary-i386/mailx_8.1.1-10.1_i386.deb
m68k:: http://security.debian.org/dists/potato/main/updates/binary-m68k/mailx_8.1.1-10.1_m68k.deb
sparc:: http://security.debian.org/dists/potato/main/updates/binary-sparc/mailx_8.1.1-10.1_sparc.deb