CVE-2017-14102

MIMEDefang 2.80 and earlier creates a PID file after dropping privileges to a non-root account, which might allow local users to kill arbitrary processes by leveraging access to this non-root account for PID file modification before a root script executes a kill cat /pathname command, as demonstrated by the init-script.in and mimedefang-init.in scripts.

Weakness

The product does not initialize or incorrectly initializes a resource, which might leave the resource in an unexpected state when it is accessed or used.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, in Java, if the programmer does not explicitly initialize a variable, then the code could produce a compile-time error (if the variable is local) or automatically initialize the variable to the default value for the variable’s type. In Perl, if explicit initialization is not performed, then a default value of undef is assigned, which is interpreted as 0, false, or an equivalent value depending on the context in which the variable is accessed.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/26.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/29.html

References

• http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/pipermail/mimedefang/2017-August/038077.html
• http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/pipermail/mimedefang/2017-August/038085.html
• http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/pipermail/mimedefang/2017-August/038077.html
• http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/pipermail/mimedefang/2017-August/038085.html