Debian Security Advisory

DSA-198-1 nullmailer -- denial of service

Date Reported:
18 Nov 2002
Affected Packages:
nullmailer
Vulnerable:
Yes
Security database references:
In the Bugtraq database (at SecurityFocus): BugTraq ID 6193.
In Mitre's CVE dictionary: CVE-2002-1313.
More information:

A problem has been discovered in nullmailer, a simple relay-only mail transport agent for hosts that relay mail to a fixed set of smart relays. When a mail is to be delivered locally to a user that doesn't exist, nullmailer tries to deliver it, discovers a user unknown error and stops delivering. Unfortunately, it stops delivering entirely, not only this mail. Hence, it's very easy to craft a denial of service.

This problem has been fixed in version 1.00RC5-16.1woody2 for the current stable distribution (woody) and in version 1.00RC5-17 for the unstable distribution (sid). The old stable distribution (potato) does not contain a nullmailer package.

We recommend that you upgrade your nullmailer package.

Fixed in:

Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 (woody)

Source:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2.dsc
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2.diff.gz
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5.orig.tar.gz
Alpha:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_alpha.deb
ARM:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_arm.deb
Intel IA-32:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_i386.deb
Intel IA-64:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_ia64.deb
HP Precision:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_hppa.deb
Motorola 680x0:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_m68k.deb
Big endian MIPS:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_mips.deb
Little endian MIPS:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_mipsel.deb
PowerPC:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_powerpc.deb
IBM S/390:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_s390.deb
Sun Sparc:
http://security.debian.org/pool/updates/main/n/nullmailer/nullmailer_1.00RC5-16.1woody2_sparc.deb

MD5 checksums of the listed files are available in the original advisory.