RHSA-2005:498 - Security Advisory

Topic

An updated spamassassin package that fixes a denial of service bug when
parsing malformed messages is now available.

This update has been rated as having moderate security impact by the Red
Hat Security Response Team.

Description

SpamAssassin provides a way to reduce unsolicited commercial email (SPAM)
from incoming email.

A denial of service bug has been found in SpamAssassin. An attacker could
construct a message in such a way that would cause SpamAssassin to consume
CPU resources. If a number of these messages were sent it could lead to a
denial of service, potentially preventing the delivery or filtering of
email. The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures project (cve.mitre.org) has
assigned the name CAN-2005-1266 to this issue.

SpamAssassin version 3.0.4 additionally solves a number of bugs including:

• #156390 Spamassassin consumes too much memory during learning
• #155423 URI blacklist spam bypass
• #147464 Users may now disable subject rewriting
• Smarter default Bayes scores
• Numerous other bug fixes that improve spam filter accuracy and safety

For full details, please refer to the change details of 3.0.2, 3.0.3, and
3.0.4 in SpamAssassin's online documentation at the following address:
http://wiki.apache.org/spamassassin/NextRelease

Users of SpamAssassin should update to this updated package, containing
version 3.0.4 which is not vulnerable to this issue and resolves these bugs.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously released errata
relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via Red Hat Network. To use Red Hat Network,
launch the Red Hat Update Agent with the following command:

up2date

This will start an interactive process that will result in the appropriate
RPMs being upgraded on your system.

Affected Products

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 ia64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 x86_64
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop 4 i386
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390x
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems 4 s390
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian 4 ppc

Fixes

• BZ - 147464 - spamassassin no longer allows disabling subject rewriting
• BZ - 151433 - spamd generate child processes which occupies all memory
• BZ - 159198 - CAN-2005-1266 spamassassin DoS

CVEs

• CVE-2005-1266

References

(none)