search menu icon-carat-right cmu-wordmark
Carnegie Mellon University

Software Engineering Institute

CERT Coordination Center

Sendmail fails to handle malformed multipart MIME messages

Vulnerability Note VU#146718

Original Release Date: 2006-06-14 | Last Revised: 2011-07-22

Overview

Sendmail does not properly handle malformed multipart MIME messages. This vulnerability may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to cause a denial-of-service condition.

Description

Sendmail

Sendmail is a widely used mail transfer agent (MTA).

Mail Transfer Agents (MTA)

MTAs are responsible for sending and receiving email messages over the internet. They are also referred to as mail servers or SMTP servers.

The Problem

Sendmail fails to properly handle malformed multipart MIME messages. This vulnerability may be triggered by sending a specially crafted message to a vulnerable Sendmail MTA.

Impact

This vulnerability will not cause the Sendmail server process to terminate. However, it may cause the Sendmail to consume a large amount of system resources. Specifically, if a system writes uniquely named core dump files, this vulnerability may cause available disk space to be filled with core dumps leading to a disruption of system operation resulting in a denial-of-service condition.
Additionally, this vulnerability may cause queue runs to abort; if this situation were to occur, processing and delivery of queued messages would be prevented.

Solution

Upgrade Sendmail
This issue is corrected in Sendmail version 8.13.7.


The following workarounds were provided by Sendmail:

Limit message size

Limiting the maximum message size accepted by your server (via the sendmail MaxMessageSize option) will mitigate this vulnerability.

Remove stack size limit

If your operating system limits stack size, remove that limit. This will make the attack more difficult to accomplish, as it will require a very large message. Also, by limiting the maximum message size accepted by your server (via the sendmail MaxMessageSize option), you can eliminate the attack completely.

Configure your MTA to avoid the negative impacts listed above:

    • Disable core dumps.
    • Enable the ForkEachJob option at the cost of lower queue run performance and potentially a high number of processes.
    • Set QueueSortOrder to random, which will randomize the order jobs are processed. Note that with random queue sorting, the bad message will still be processed and the queue run aborted every time, but at a different, random spot.

Vendor Information

146718
 
Expand all

View all 97 vendors View less vendors


CVSS Metrics

Group Score Vector
Base
Temporal
Environmental

References

Acknowledgements

This vulnerability was reported by Sendmail.

This document was written by Jeff Gennari based on information from Sendmail.

Other Information

CVE IDs: CVE-2006-1173
Severity Metric: 13.51
Date Public: 2006-06-14
Date First Published: 2006-06-14
Date Last Updated: 2011-07-22 12:53 UTC
Document Revision: 43

Sponsored by CISA.

Download PGP Key

Read CERT/CC Blog

Learn about Vulnerability Analysis