Issued:

2009-09-08

Updated:

2009-09-08

RHSA-2009:1427 - Moderate: fetchmail security update

Synopsis

Moderate: fetchmail security update

Type/Severity

Security Advisory Moderate

Topic

An updated fetchmail package that fixes multiple security issues is now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3, 4, and 5.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red Hat Security Response Team.

Description

Fetchmail is a remote mail retrieval and forwarding utility intended for use over on-demand TCP/IP links, such as SLIP and PPP connections.

It was discovered that fetchmail is affected by the previously published "null prefix attack", caused by incorrect handling of NULL characters in X.509 certificates. If an attacker is able to get a carefully-crafted certificate signed by a trusted Certificate Authority, the attacker could use the certificate during a man-in-the-middle attack and potentially confuse fetchmail into accepting it by mistake. (CVE-2009-2666)

A flaw was found in the way fetchmail handles rejections from a remote SMTP server when sending warning mail to the postmaster. If fetchmail sent a warning mail to the postmaster of an SMTP server and that SMTP server rejected it, fetchmail could crash. (CVE-2007-4565)

A flaw was found in fetchmail. When fetchmail is run in double verbose mode ("-v -v"), it could crash upon receiving certain, malformed mail messages with long headers. A remote attacker could use this flaw to cause a denial of service if fetchmail was also running in daemon mode ("-d"). (CVE-2008-2711)

Note: when using SSL-enabled services, it is recommended that the fetchmail "--sslcertck" option be used to enforce strict SSL certificate checking.

All fetchmail users should upgrade to this updated package, which contains backported patches to correct these issues. If fetchmail is running in daemon mode, it must be restarted for this update to take effect (use the "fetchmail --quit" command to stop the fetchmail process).

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure that all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at This content is not included.http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

Updated Packages

• fetchmail-6.2.5-6.0.1.el4_8.1.s390.rpm
• fetchmail-6.2.5-6.0.1.el4_8.1.ppc.rpm
• fetchmail-6.3.6-1.1.el5_3.1.ppc.rpm
• fetchmail-6.3.6-1.1.el5_3.1.i386.rpm
• fetchmail-6.3.6-1.1.el5_3.1.ia64.rpm
• fetchmail-6.3.6-1.1.el5_3.1.src.rpm
• fetchmail-6.3.6-1.1.el5_3.1.s390x.rpm
• fetchmail-6.2.5-6.0.1.el4_8.1.x86_64.rpm
• fetchmail-6.3.6-1.1.el5_3.1.x86_64.rpm
• fetchmail-6.2.5-6.0.1.el4_8.1.ia64.rpm
• fetchmail-6.2.5-6.0.1.el4_8.1.src.rpm
• fetchmail-6.2.5-6.0.1.el4_8.1.s390x.rpm
• fetchmail-6.2.5-6.0.1.el4_8.1.i386.rpm

Fixes

• This content is not included.BZ - 260601
• This content is not included.BZ - 451758
• This content is not included.BZ - 515804

CVEs

• CVE-2008-2711
• CVE-2009-2666
• CVE-2007-4565

References

• http://www.redhat.com/security/updates/classification/#moderate

Additional information

• The Red Hat security contact is This content is not included.secalert@redhat.com. More contact details at https://access.redhat.com/security/team/contact/.
• Offline Security Data data is available for integration with other systems. See Offline Security Data API to get started.