Debian GNU/Linux Advisory: getmail

Written By
Web Webster
Web Webster
Sep 27, 2004

Debian Security Advisory DSA 553-1 security@debian.org
http://www.debian.org/security/
Martin Schulze
September 27th, 2004 http://www.debian.org/security/faq


Package : getmail
Vulnerability : symlink vulnerability
Problem-Type : local
Debian-specific: no
CVE ID : CAN-2004-0880 CAN-2004-0881
Debian Bug : 272561

A security problem has been discovered in getmail, a POP3 and
APOP mail gatherer and forwarder. An attacker with a shell account
on the victims host could utilise getmail to overwrite arbitrary
files when it is running as root.

For the stable distribution (woody) this problem has been fixed
in version 2.3.7-2.

For the unstable distribution (sid) this problem has been fixed
in version 3.2.5-1.

We recommend that you upgrade your getmail package.

Upgrade Instructions


wget url

will fetch the file for you
dpkg -i file.deb

will install the referenced file.

If you are using the apt-get package manager, use the line for
sources.list as given below:

apt-get update

will update the internal database apt-get upgrade

will install corrected packages

You may use an automated update by adding the resources from the
footer to the proper configuration.

Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 alias woody


Source archives:


http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/g/getmail/getmail_2.3.7-2.dsc

Size/MD5 checksum: 583 6263f8d2d75ec3eb21dd302e0b9d6729

http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/g/getmail/getmail_2.3.7-2.diff.gz

Size/MD5 checksum: 2645 ff40d8f72744bfec8a963ece950e0bcd

http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/g/getmail/getmail_2.3.7.orig.tar.gz

Size/MD5 checksum: 70944 4eef6be77a4cbe1a86eef75affd31b05

Architecture independent components:


http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/g/getmail/getmail_2.3.7-2_all.deb

Size/MD5 checksum: 74388 f2b9e79b1ddd8ef8bf719d4e1894f051

These files will probably be moved into the stable distribution
on its next update.


For apt-get: deb http://security.debian.org/
stable/updates main
For dpkg-ftp: ftp://security.debian.org/debian-security
dists/stable/updates/main
Mailing list: debian-security-announce@lists.debian.org

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Package info: `apt-cache show <pkg>’ and http://packages.debian.org/<pkg>

Web Webster

Web Webster

Web Webster has more than 20 years of writing and editorial experience in the tech sector. He’s written and edited news, demand generation, user-focused, and thought leadership content for business software solutions, consumer tech, and Linux Today, he edits and writes for a portfolio of tech industry news and analysis websites including webopedia.com, and DatabaseJournal.com.

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