Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 8.8

GHSA-cxf7-m5g2-v594 json

Zend-Mail remote code execution in zend-mail via Sendmail adapter

published 2y ago modified last yr.

cvss
8.8
version 3.1, GitHub
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
—
no score, EPSS covers CVEs only
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

When using the zend-mail component to send email via the `Zend\Mail\Transport\Sendmail` transport, a malicious user may be able to inject arbitrary parameters to the system sendmail program. The attack is performed by providing additional quote characters within an address; when unsanitized, they can be interpreted as additional command line arguments, leading to the vulnerability.

The following example demonstrates injecting additional parameters to the sendmail binary via the From address: ``` use Zend\Mail;

$mail = new Mail\Message(); $mail->setBody('This is the text of the email.');

// inject additional parameters to sendmail command line $mail->setFrom('"AAA\" params injection"@domain', 'Sender\'s name');

$mail->addTo('hacker@localhost', 'Name of recipient'); $mail->setSubject('TestSubject');

$transport = new Mail\Transport\Sendmail(); $transport->send($mail); ``` The attack works because zend-mail filters the email addresses using the RFC 3696 specification, where the string "AAA\" params injection"@domain is considered a valid address. This validation is provided using the zend-validator component with the following parameters: ``` Zend\Validator\EmailAddress( Zend\Validator\Hostname::ALLOW_DNS | Zend\Validator\Hostname::ALLOW_LOCAL ) ``` The above accepts local domain with any string specified by double quotes as the local part. While this is valid per RFC 3696, due to the fact that sender email addresses are provided to the sendmail binary via the command line, they create the vulnerability described above.

Patch / fix

Is GHSA-cxf7-m5g2-v594 in your dependencies? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
GitHub 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
packagist zendframework/zend-mail
>=2.0.0, <2.4.11
>=2.5.0, <2.7.2
2.4.11
2.7.2

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-74 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.