[gentoo-announce] [ GLSA 200808-12 ] Postfix: Local privilege escalation vulnerability

[Raphael Marichez]

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Gentoo Linux Security Advisory                           GLSA 200808-12
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                                            http://security.gentoo.org/
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  Severity: High
     Title: Postfix: Local privilege escalation vulnerability
      Date: August 14, 2008
      Bugs: #232642
        ID: 200808-12

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Synopsis
========

Postfix incorrectly checks the ownership of a mailbox, allowing, in
certain circumstances, to append data to arbitrary files on a local
system with root privileges.

Background
==========

Postfix is Wietse Venema's mailer that attempts to be fast, easy to
administer, and secure, as an alternative to the widely-used Sendmail
program.

Affected packages
=================

    -------------------------------------------------------------------
     Package           /  Vulnerable  /                     Unaffected
    -------------------------------------------------------------------
  1  mail-mta/postfix     < 2.5.3-r1                      *>= 2.4.7-r1
                                                           >= 2.5.3-r1

Description
===========

Sebastian Krahmer of SuSE has found that Postfix allows to deliver mail
to root-owned symlinks in an insecure manner under certain conditions.
Normally, Postfix does not deliver mail to symlinks, except to
root-owned symlinks, for compatibility with the systems using symlinks
in /dev like Solaris. Furthermore, some systems like Linux allow to
hardlink a symlink, while the POSIX.1-2001 standard requires that the
symlink is followed. Depending on the write permissions and the
delivery agent being used, this can lead to an arbitrary local file
overwriting vulnerability (CVE-2008-2936). Furthermore, the Postfix
delivery agent does not properly verify the ownership of a mailbox
before delivering mail (CVE-2008-2937).

Impact
======

The combination of these features allows a local attacker to hardlink a
root-owned symlink such that the newly created symlink would be
root-owned and would point to a regular file (or another symlink) that
would be written by the Postfix built-in local(8) or virtual(8)
delivery agents, regardless the ownership of the final destination
regular file. Depending on the write permissions of the spool mail
directory, the delivery style, and the existence of a root mailbox,
this could allow a local attacker to append a mail to an arbitrary file
like /etc/passwd in order to gain root privileges.

The default configuration of Gentoo Linux does not permit any kind of
user privilege escalation.

The second vulnerability (CVE-2008-2937) allows a local attacker,
already having write permissions to the mail spool directory which is
not the case on Gentoo by default, to create a previously nonexistent
mailbox before Postfix creates it, allowing to read the mail of another
user on the system.

Workaround
==========

The following conditions should be met in order to be vulnerable to
local privilege escalation.

* The mail delivery style is mailbox, with the Postfix built-in
  local(8) or virtual(8) delivery agents.

* The mail spool directory (/var/spool/mail) is user-writeable.

* The user can create hardlinks pointing to root-owned symlinks
  located in other directories.

Consequently, each one of the following workarounds is efficient.

* Verify that your /var/spool/mail directory is not writeable by a
  user. Normally on Gentoo, only the mail group has write access, and
  no end-user should be granted the mail group ownership.

* Prevent the local users from being able to create hardlinks
  pointing outside of the /var/spool/mail directory, e.g. with a
  dedicated partition.

* Use a non-builtin Postfix delivery agent, like procmail or
  maildrop.

* Use the maildir delivery style of Postfix ("home_mailbox=Maildir/"
  for example).

Concerning the second vulnerability, check the write permissions of
/var/spool/mail, or check that every Unix account already has a
mailbox, by using Wietse Venema's Perl script available in the official
advisory.

Resolution
==========

All Postfix users should upgrade to the latest version:

    # emerge --sync
    # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=mail-mta/postfix-2.5.3-r1"

References
==========

  [ 1 ] CVE-2008-2936
        http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-2936
  [ 2 ] CVE-2008-2937
        http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-2937
  [ 3 ] Official Advisory
        http://article.gmane.org/gmane.mail.postfix.announce/110

Availability
============

This GLSA and any updates to it are available for viewing at
the Gentoo Security Website:

  http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-200808-12.xml

Concerns?
=========

Security is a primary focus of Gentoo Linux and ensuring the
confidentiality and security of our users machines is of utmost
importance to us. Any security concerns should be addressed to
security@g.o or alternatively, you may file a bug at
http://bugs.gentoo.org.

License
=======

Copyright 2008 Gentoo Foundation, Inc; referenced text
belongs to its owner(s).

The contents of this document are licensed under the
Creative Commons - Attribution / Share Alike license.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5