CVE-2017-15705

NameCVE-2017-15705
DescriptionA denial of service vulnerability was identified that exists in Apache SpamAssassin before 3.4.2. The vulnerability arises with certain unclosed tags in emails that cause markup to be handled incorrectly leading to scan timeouts. In Apache SpamAssassin, using HTML::Parser, we setup an object and hook into the begin and end tag event handlers In both cases, the "open" event is immediately followed by a "close" event - even if the tag *does not* close in the HTML being parsed. Because of this, we are missing the "text" event to deal with the object normally. This can cause carefully crafted emails that might take more scan time than expected leading to a Denial of Service. The issue is possibly a bug or design decision in HTML::Parser that specifically impacts the way Apache SpamAssassin uses the module with poorly formed html. The exploit has been seen in the wild but not believed to have been purposefully part of a Denial of Service attempt. We are concerned that there may be attempts to abuse the vulnerability in the future.
SourceCVE (at NVD; CERT, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)
ReferencesDLA-1578-1
Debian Bugs908969

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source PackageReleaseVersionStatus
spamassassin (PTS)jessie, jessie (lts)3.4.2-0+deb8u4fixed
stretch (security), stretch (lts), stretch3.4.2-1~deb9u4fixed
buster, buster (security)3.4.2-1+deb10u3fixed
bullseye3.4.6-1fixed
bookworm4.0.0-6fixed
trixie4.0.1~pre1-1fixed
sid4.0.1-1fixed

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
spamassassinsourcewheezy(unfixed)end-of-life
spamassassinsourcejessie3.4.2-0+deb8u1DLA-1578-1
spamassassinsourcestretch3.4.2-1~deb9u1
spamassassinsource(unstable)3.4.2-1908969

Notes

https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2018/09/16/1

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