Sendmail, Inc., and the Sendmail Consortium announce the availability of sendmail 8.12.9. It contains a fix for a critical security problem discovered by Michal Zalewski whom we thank for bringing this problem to our attention. Sendmail urges all users to either upgrade to sendmail 8.12.9 or apply a patch for your sendmail version that is part of this announcement.. . .
Sendmail, Inc., and the Sendmail Consortium announce the availability of sendmail 8.12.9. It contains a fix for a critical security problem discovered by Michal Zalewski whom we thank for bringing this problem to our attention. Sendmail urges all users to either upgrade to sendmail 8.12.9 or apply a patch for your sendmail version that is part of this announcement. Remember to check the PGP signatures of patches or releases obtained via FTP or HTTP (to check the correctness of the patches in this announcement please verify the PGP signature of it). For those not running the open source version, check with your vendor for a patch.

Visit Sendmail Open Source - Open Source Email Server | Proofpoint US for full information.

We apologize for releasing this information today (2003-03-29) but we were forced to do so by an e-mail on a public mailing list (that has been sent by an irresponsible individual) which contains information about the security flaw.

For a complete list of changes see the release notes down below.

Please send bug reports to sendmail-bugs@sendmail.org as usual.

Note: We have changed the way we digitally sign the source code distributions to simplify verification: in contrast to earlier versions two .sig files are provided, one each for the gzip'ed version and the compressed version. That is, instead of signing the tar file, we sign the compressed/gzip'ed files, so you do not need to uncompress the file before checking the signature.

This version can be found at

.sig

and the usual mirror sites.

MD5 signatures:

  3dba3b6d769b3681640d0a38b0eba48c sendmail.8.12.9.tar.gz  19e39c9e9bc8fae288245c546639e1f4 sendmail.8.12.9.tar.gz.sig  268fc4045ba3eac6dfd9dc95d889ba5f sendmail.8.12.9.tar.Z  19e39c9e9bc8fae288245c546639e1f4 sendmail.8.12.9.tar.Z.sig
You either need the first two files or the third and fourth, i.e., the gzip'ed version or the compressed version and the corresponding .sig file. The PGP signature was created using the Sendmail Signing Key/2003, available on the web site (https://www.proofpoint.com/us/products/email-protection/open-source-email-solution) or on the public key servers.

Since sendmail 8.11 and later includes hooks to cryptography, the following information from OpenSSL applies to sendmail as well.

     PLEASE REMEMBER THAT EXPORT/IMPORT AND/OR USE OF STRONG CRYPTOGRAPHY     SOFTWARE, PROVIDING CRYPTOGRAPHY HOOKS OR EVEN JUST COMMUNICATING     TECHNICAL DETAILS ABOUT CRYPTOGRAPHY SOFTWARE IS ILLEGAL IN SOME     PARTS OF THE WORLD.  SO, WHEN YOU IMPORT THIS PACKAGE TO YOUR     COUNTRY, RE-DISTRIBUTE IT FROM THERE OR EVEN JUST EMAIL TECHNICAL     SUGGESTIONS OR EVEN SOURCE PATCHES TO THE AUTHOR OR OTHER PEOPLE     YOU ARE STRONGLY ADVISED TO PAY CLOSE ATTENTION TO ANY EXPORT/IMPORT     AND/OR USE LAWS WHICH APPLY TO YOU. THE AUTHORS ARE NOT LIABLE FOR     ANY VIOLATIONS YOU MAKE HERE. SO BE CAREFUL, IT IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.    			SENDMAIL RELEASE NOTES        $Id: RELEASE_NOTES,v 8.1340.2.132 2003/03/29 14:02:26 ca Exp $      This listing shows the version of the sendmail binary, the version  of the sendmail configuration files, the date of release, and a  summary of the changes in that release.    8.12.9/8.12.9	2003/03/29  	SECURITY: Fix a buffer overflow in address parsing due to  		a char to int conversion problem which is potentially  		remotely exploitable.  Problem found by Michal Zalewski.    		Note: an MTA that is not patched might be vulnerable to  		data that it receives from untrusted sources, which  		includes DNS.  	To provide partial protection to internal, unpatched sendmail MTAs,  		8.12.9 changes by default (char)0xff to (char)0x7f in  		headers etc.  To turn off this conversion compile with  		-DALLOW_255 or use the command line option -d82.101.  	To provide partial protection for internal, unpatched MTAs that may be  		performing 7->8 or 8->7 bit MIME conversions, the default  		for MaxMimeHeaderLength has been changed to 2048/1024.  		Note: this does have a performance impact, and it only  		protects against frontal attacks from the outside.  		To disable the checks and return to pre-8.12.9 defaults,  		set MaxMimeHeaderLength to 0/0.  	Do not complain about -ba when submitting mail.  Problem noted  		by Derek Wueppelmann.  	Fix compilation with Berkeley DB 1.85 on systems that do not  		have flock(2).  Problem noted by Andy Harper of Kings  		College London.  	Properly initialize data structure for dns maps to avoid various  		errors, e.g., looping processes.  Problem noted by  		Maurice Makaay.  	CONFIG: Prevent multiple application of rule to add smart host.  		Patch from Andrzej Filip.  	CONFIG: Fix queue group declaration in MAILER(`usenet').  	CONTRIB: buildvirtuser: New option -t builds the virtusertable  		text file instead of the database map.  	Portability:  		Revert wrong change made in 8.12.7 and actually use the  			builtin getopt() version in sendmail on Linux.  			This can be overridden by using -DSM_CONF_GETOPT=0  			in which case the OS supplied version will be used.      Instructions to extract and apply the patches for sendmail:    The data below is a uuencoded, gzip'ed tar file.  Store the data  between "========= begin patch ========" and "========= end patch  ==========" into a file called "patch.sm" and apply the following  command:    uudecode -p > patch.sm | gunzip -c | tar -xf -    This will give you these files (explanation for each file is on  the left, only "prescan.VERSION.patch" are the files).    prescan.8.12.8.patch	only for 8.12.8, changes version string to 8.12.8p1  prescan.8.12.patch	for 8.12.0 - 8.12.7, does not change version string  prescan.8.11.6.patch	only for 8.11.6, changes version string to 8.11.6p2  prescan.8.11.patch	for 8.11.0 - 8.11.5, does not change version string  prescan.8.9.3.patch	only for 8.9.3, changes version string to 8.9.3p2  prescan.8.9.patch	for 8.9.0 - 8.9.2, does not change version string    Apply the appropriate patch to your version of the sendmail source  code (change the version number below to the right one!), e.g.,    cd sendmail-8.12.8/sendmail  patch > prescan.8.12.8.patch    recompile sendmail, and install the new binary.