Quantum Secular Labs / Blog / Advisories

CVE-2003-0161: Sendmail: Buffer overflow

CVE-2003-0161 has a CVSS v2 base score of 10.0 (the maximum on that scale) and affects Sendmail, along with 8 other products in NVD’s configuration data. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available.

Vulnerability description

The prescan() function in the address parser (parseaddr.c) in Sendmail before 8.12.9 does not properly handle certain conversions from char and int types, which can cause a length check to be disabled when Sendmail misinterprets an input value as a special "NOCHAR" control value, allowing attackers to cause a denial of service and possibly execute arbitrary code via a buffer overflow attack using messages, a different vulnerability than CVE-2002-1337.

Severity breakdown

CVSS v2.0 10.0: AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

  • Access vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network.
  • Access complexity: Low. No special conditions are required.
  • Authentication: None. No authentication is needed.
  • Confidentiality impact: Complete. Total information disclosure.
  • Integrity impact: Complete. Total loss of integrity.
  • Availability impact: Complete. Total shutdown of the component.

Affected products

  • Sendmail: 2.6; 2.6.1; 2.6.2; 3.0; 3.0.1; 3.0.2; 3.0.3; 8.9.0; 8.9.1; 8.9.2; 8.9.3; 8.10
  • Sendmail Switch: 2.1; 2.1.1; 2.1.2; 2.1.3; 2.1.4; 2.1.5; 2.2; 2.2.1; 2.2.2; 2.2.3; 2.2.4; 2.2.5
  • Compaq Tru64: 4.0b; 4.0d; 4.0d_pk9_bl17; 4.0f; 4.0f_pk6_bl17; 4.0f_pk7_bl18; 4.0g; 4.0g_pk3_bl17; 5.0; 5.0_pk4_bl17; 5.0_pk4_bl18; 5.0a
  • HP Ux: 10.00; 10.01; 10.08; 10.09; 10.10; 10.16; 10.20; 10.24; 10.26; 10.30; 10.34; 11.00
  • HP Ux Series 700: 10.20
  • HP Ux Series 800: 10.20
  • HP Sis: all versions listed by NVD
  • Sun Solaris: 2.4; 2.5; 2.5.1; 2.6; 7.0; 8.0; 9.0; 9.0 x86_update_2
  • Sunos: all versions listed by NVD; 5.4; 5.5; 5.5.1; 5.7; 5.8

References