[990] in linux-security and linux-alert archive
Re: [linux-security] sendmail security
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ian Jackson)
Thu Aug 8 13:49:13 1996
Date: Thu, 1 Aug 96 02:42 BST
From: Ian Jackson <ian@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>
To: linux-security@tarsier.cv.nrao.edu
In-Reply-To: <E0uiuMn-0000KO-00@stdismas.bogon.com>
John Henders writes ("Re: [linux-security] sendmail security"):
...
> Qmail is nice, but in defence of smail, I'd like to point out that smail
> has had _one_ cert notice since they started doing cert advisories.
...
> [REW: I don't believe that the number of CERT warnings is a measure
> for security. [elided - iwj]]
Smail (properly configured) has only ever had one known security hole,
and that one was not exploitable from the network - you had to have an
account on the system. The bug was that you could under some
circumstances have debugging output sent to a file of your choosing
even if you couldn't ordinarily write the file. NB that this hole was
NOT exploitable by the DEBUG command available via Smail's SMTP
server, as that doesn't allow a filename to be specified, and that it
has nothing to do with prehistoric Sendmails' hideous DEBUG hole.
Ian.
220 chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk Smail3.1.29.1 #35 ready at Thu, 1 Aug 96 02:40 BST
debug
250 level 1. You think this is a security hole ? Please RTFM.
quit
221 chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk closing connection
