__________________________________________________________ The U.S. Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Capability ___ __ __ _ ___ / | /_\ / \___ __|__ / \ \___ __________________________________________________________ INFORMATION BULLETIN sendmail Group Permissions Vulnerability December 10, 1996 15:00 GMT Number H-11 ______________________________________________________________________________ PROBLEM: A security problem has been identified in sendmail affecting version 8. PLATFORM: All platforms running sendmail version 8. DAMAGE: This vulnerability may allow local users to run programs with group permissions of other users. SOLUTION: Install sendmail 8.8.4 as soon as possible. For sites that can not install sendmail 8.8.4, apply the workaround described below. ______________________________________________________________________________ VULNERABILITY This vulnerability requires group writable files to be ASSESSMENT: available on the same file system as a file that the attacker can convince sendmail to trust. ______________________________________________________________________________ [ Start of AUSCERT Advisory ] =========================================================================== AA-96.15 AUSCERT Advisory sendmail Group Permissions Vulnerability 3 December 1996 Last Revised: -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- AUSCERT has received information of a security problem in sendmail affecting version 8. This vulnerability may allow local users to run programs with group permissions of other users. This vulnerability requires group writable files to be available on the same file system as a file that the attacker can convince sendmail to trust. AUSCERT recommends that sites take the steps outlined in Section 3 as soon as possible. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Description When delivering mail to a program listed in a .forward or :include: file, that program is run with the group permissions possessed by the owner of that .forward or :include: file. The owner of the file is used to initialize the list of group permissions that are in force when the program is run. This list is determined by scanning the /etc/group file. It is possible to attain group permissions you should not have by linking to a file that is owned by someone else, but on which you have group write permissions. By changing that file you can acquire the group permissions of the owner of that file. 2. Impact An attacker can gain group permissions of another user, if the attacked user has a file that is group writable by the attacker on the same filesystem as either (a) the attacker's home directory, or (b) a :include: file that is referenced directly from the aliases file and is in a directory writable by the attacker. The first (.forward) attack only works against root. N.B.: this attack does not give you root "owner" permissions, but does give you access to the groups that list root in /etc/group. 3. Workarounds/Solution AUSCERT recommends that sendmail 8.8.4 be installed as soon as possible (see Section 3.1). For sites that can not install sendmail 8.8.4, apply the workaround described in Section 3.2. 3.1 Upgrade to sendmail 8.8.4. Eric Allman has released sendmail 8.8.4 which fixes this vulnerability. There is no patch for any version of sendmail prior to 8.8.0. Sites are encouraged to upgrade to sendmail 8.8.4 as soon as possible. The current version of sendmail is available from: ftp://ftp.sendmail.org/pub/sendmail/ ftp://ftp.auscert.org.au/pub/mirrors/ftp.cs.berkeley.edu/ucb/sendmail/ ftp://ftp.cert.dfn.de/pub/tools/net/sendmail/ The MD5 checksum for this distribution is: MD5 (sendmail.8.8.4.patch) = bb0f24abdb1416748b0c7a9f9315fa59 MD5 (sendmail.8.8.4.tar.Z) = 0b4e4d09c75733ab63dde1cb6a52c615 MD5 (sendmail.8.8.4.tar.gz) = 64ce6393a6968a0dc7c6652dace127b0 3.2 Workaround Eric Allman, the author of sendmail, has provided the following workaround. Set the UnsafeGroupWrites option in the sendmail.cf file. This option tells sendmail that group-writable files should not be considered safe for mailing to programs or files. This causes sendmail to refuse to run any programs referenced from group-writable files. Setting this option is a good idea in any case, but may require that your users tighten permissions on their .forward files and :include: files. The command "find -user root -type f -perm -020 -print" will print the names of all files owned by root that are group writable on a given . In addition, group memberships should be audited regularly. Users should not be in groups without a specific need. In particular, root generally does not need to be listed in most groups. As a policy matter, root should have a umask of (at least) 022 so that group writable files are made consciously. Also, the aliases file should not reference :include: files in writable directories. 4. Additional Measures This section describes some additional measures for increasing the security of sendmail. These measures are unrelated to the vulnerability described in this advisory but should be followed. Sites must apply the Workarounds/Solution described in Section 3 first, and then optionally apply the additional measures described in this Section. 4.1 Restrict Ability to Mail to Programs If the ability to send electronic mail to programs (for example, vacation programs) is not required, this feature should be disabled. This is achieved by modifying the "Mprog" line in the configuration file to mail to "/bin/false" rather than "/bin/sh". The following line in the ".mc" file will achieve this: define(`LOCAL_SHELL_PATH', `/bin/false')dnl If mailing to programs is required, it is recommended that the sendmail restricted shell, smrsh, be used at all times. This applies to all versions of sendmail, including vendor versions. smrsh is supplied with the current version of sendmail and includes documentation and installation instructions. 5. Additional Information Sendmail 8.8.4 also fixes a denial of service attack. If your system relies on the TryNullMXList option in order to forward mail to third party MX hosts, an attacker can force that option off, thereby causing mail to bounce. As a workaround, you can use the mailertable feature to deliver to third party MX hosts regardless of the setting of the TryNullMXList option. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- AUSCERT thanks Eric Allman for his rapid response to this vulnerability, and for providing much of the technical content used in this advisory. AUSCERT also thanks Terry Kyriacopoulos (Interlog Internet Services) and Dan Bernstein (University of Illinois at Chicago) for their reporting of these vulnerabilities. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [ End of AUSCERT Advisory ] _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC wishes to acknowledge the contributions of AUSCERT and Eric Allman for the information contained in this bulletin. _______________________________________________________________________________ CIAC, the Computer Incident Advisory Capability, is the computer security incident response team for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the emergency backup response team for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). CIAC is located at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California. 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LAST 10 CIAC BULLETINS ISSUED (Previous bulletins available from CIAC) G-48: TCP SYN Flooding and IP Spoofing Attacks H-01: Vulnerabilities in bash H-02: SUN's TCP SYN Flooding Solutions H-03: HP-UX_suid_Vulnerabilities H-04: HP-UX Ping Vulnerability H-05: Internet Hoaxes H-07: Sendmail SIGHUP-smtpd Vulnerability H-08: lpr Buffer Overrun Vulnerability H-09: HP 9000 Access Vulnerability H-10: HP-UX Security Vulnerabilities (passwd, fpkg2swpkg, newgrp) RECENT CIAC NOTES ISSUED (Previous Notes available from CIAC) Notes 07 - 3/29/95 A comprehensive review of SATAN Notes 08 - 4/4/95 A Courtney update Notes 09 - 4/24/95 More on the "Good Times" virus urban legend Notes 10 - 6/16/95 PKZ300B Trojan, Logdaemon/FreeBSD, vulnerability in S/Key, EBOLA Virus Hoax, and Caibua Virus Notes 11 - 7/31/95 Virus Update, Hats Off to Administrators, America On-Line Virus Scare, SPI 3.2.2 Released, The Die_Hard Virus Notes 12 - 9/12/95 Securely configuring Public Telnet Services, X Windows, beta release of Merlin, Microsoft Word Macro Viruses, Allegations of Inappropriate Data Collection in Win95 Notes 96-01 - 3/18/96 Java and JavaScript Vulnerabilities, FIRST Conference Announcement, Security and Web Search Engines, Microsoft Word Macro Virus Update