Bugs item #1179487, was opened at 2005-04-08 21:46
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by tkikuchi
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Category: mail delivery
Group: 2.1 (stable)
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Submitted By: Mark Crispin (mrcrispin)
Assigned to: Tokio Kikuchi (tkikuchi)
Summary: denial of service security bug
Initial Comment:
We've had multiple incidents of this problem.
If a digest gets a message containing an attachment
using an RFC 2231 encoded parameter has a character
set that is unknown to Python (in this case, "X-
UNKNOWN"), then routine get_filename() in
email/Message.py (not to be confused with
Mailman/Message.py) calls unicode() without any error
trap.
The result is that digest delivery for that entire mailing
list is suspended until that message is manually
removed.
It appears that passing an "ignore" as the errors
parameter to unicode() won't stop Python from
generating this error.
I'm not sure as to the best way to fix this. I haven't
worked much with Python at all, and Mailman support
was just dumped on my lap.
I can see that there are lots of unicode() calls
throughout the Mailman source that don't have any error
protection. I don't know which ones are also vulnerable
to this attack.
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/mailman/cron/senddigests", line 94, in ?
main()
File "/usr/local/mailman/cron/senddigests", line 86, in
main
mlist.send_digest_now()
File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Digester.py", line 60,
in send_digest_n
ow
ToDigest.send_digests(self, mboxfp)
File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/ToDigest.py",
line 132, in sen
d_digests
send_i18n_digests(mlist, mboxfp)
File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/ToDigest.py",
line 306, in sen
d_i18n_digests
msg = scrubber(mlist, msg)
File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/Scrubber.py",
line 268, in pro
cess
url = save_attachment(mlist, part, dir)
File "/usr/local/mailman/Mailman/Handlers/Scrubber.py",
line 362, in sav
e_attachment
fnext = os.path.splitext(msg.get_filename(''))[1]
File "/usr/local/mailman/pythonlib/email/Message.py",
line 731, in get_f
ilename
return unicode(newvalue[2], newvalue[0] or 'us-ascii')
LookupError: unknown encoding: X-UNKNOWN
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>Comment By: Tokio Kikuchi (tkikuchi)
Date: 2005-06-26 05:33
Message:
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It looks like the current scheme of sending digest during
the course of regular delivery was a bad idea. Workaround
may be to enclose the send_digest part in try - except
clause. Please try the latest CVS code.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment By: Mark Crispin (mrcrispin)
Date: 2005-04-10 01:48
Message:
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Our version of mailman is 2.1.5, the current release version,
along with customizations made at UW by my predecessor
for use with our web pubcookie authentication system.
However, the fault occurs in unmodified Mailman code, and
he insists that nothing he did would affect this.
I call it a security issue because anyone can send a
message to a mailman mailing list that will cause digests to
fail and be stuck, just by using a bogus character set name
in an attachment filename. Not only isn't the message in
question sent, but all subsequent messages are also held
because of the trap.
A denial of service problem *is* a security problem.
I don't know how extensive the problem is in Mailman, but I
see numerous unicode() calls in the Mailman source that
have no protection from error traps. So maybe more than
just digests are affected.
If you can't reproduce the problem, I'll be happy to provide
some of the messages which hung our digests. The problem
definitely happens with charset names in encoded-
parameters in MIME (attachment filenames).
Thank you in advance for your rapid attention.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment By: Tokio Kikuchi (tkikuchi)
Date: 2005-04-09 20:57
Message:
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What is your mailman version? I believe i18n charset issues
are greatly improved in 2.1.6 beta.
BTW, I don't like to call this a security issue.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Comment By: Mark Crispin (mrcrispin)
Date: 2005-04-09 16:38
Message:
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We've kept copies of the messages which caused the
problem in the most recent incident, so if you need help in
reproducing/testing we'll be happy to supply them as test
data.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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