Ubuntu Security Notice USN-153-1
26th July, 2005
fetchmail vulnerability
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
- Ubuntu 5.04
- Ubuntu 4.10
Details
Ross Boylan discovered a remote buffer overflow in fetchmail. By
sending invalid responses with very long UIDs, a faulty or malicious
POP server could crash fetchmail or execute arbitrary code with the
privileges of the user invoking fetchmail.
fetchmail is commonly run as root to fetch mail for multiple user
accounts; in this case, this vulnerability could be exploited to
compromise the whole system.
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package version:
- Ubuntu 5.04:
- fetchmail
- Ubuntu 4.10:
- fetchmail
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
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