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
| Name |
Vendor |
Start Version |
End Version |
| Mimedefang |
Mimedefang |
2.80 (including) |
2.80 (including) |
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.
References