Email Security

Serious Vulnerability Discovered in OpenSMTPD

Researchers at cybersecurity firm Qualys have identified a potentially serious vulnerability in OpenSMTPD that can allow remote command execution with elevated privileges.

Eduard Kovacs

January 29, 2020

Researchers at cybersecurity firm Qualys have identified a potentially serious vulnerability in OpenSMTPD that can allow remote command execution with elevated privileges.

OpenSMTPD is the OpenBSD Project’s free and open source implementation of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). The portable version of OpenSMTPD can run on various BSD and Linux distributions, as well as Apple’s Mac OS X operating system.

According to Qualys, OpenSMTPD is affected by a vulnerability that can allow an attacker to execute arbitrary shell commands with root privileges. The flaw can be exploited locally in OpenSMTPD’s default configuration, and both locally and remotely in the case of OpenSMTPD’s “uncommented” default configuration.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-7247, exists in the smtp_mailaddr() function, which is responsible for validating sender and recipient email addresses. Attacks can be carried out via specially crafted emails.

In its advisory for CVE-2020-7247, Qualys says the flaw has been exploitable since May 2018. The company has shared technical details and there is a discussion on Hacker News about the vulnerability and its root cause.

The maintainers of OpenSMTPD have released patches for the vulnerability and they have urged users to apply them as soon as possible. They have also promised to share more information about why the weakness existed “when things settle down.”

This is not the first time Qualys has found vulnerabilities in OpenSMTPD. Back in 2015, the company conducted a security audit for the project and identified several flaws that could have been exploited to cause a DoS condition, leak information, escalate privileges, and execute arbitrary code.

Written By Eduard Kovacs

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

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