Skip to main content

Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')

CVE-2021-32749

Severity High
Score 8.1/10

Summary

fail2ban is a daemon to ban hosts that cause multiple authentication errors. In versions 0.9.7 and prior, 0.10.0 through 0.10.6, and 0.11.0 through 0.11.2, there is a vulnerability that leads to possible remote code execution in the mailing action mail-whois. Command `mail` from mailutils package used in mail actions like `mail-whois` can execute command if unescaped sequences (`\n~`) are available in "foreign" input (for instance in whois output). To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker would need to insert malicious characters into the response sent by the whois server, either via a MITM attack or by taking over a whois server. The issue is patched in versions 0.10.7 and 0.11.3. As a workaround, one may avoid the usage of action `mail-whois` or patch the vulnerability manually.

  • HIGH
  • NETWORK
  • HIGH
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • NONE
  • HIGH
  • HIGH

CWE-94 - Code Injection

Code injection is a type of vulnerability that allows an attacker to execute arbitrary code. This vulnerability fully compromises the machine and can cause a wide variety of security issues, such as unauthorized access to sensitive information, manipulation of data, denial of service attacks etc. Code injection is different from command injection in the fact that it is limited by the functionality of the injected language (e.g. PHP), as opposed to command injection, which leverages existing code to execute commands, usually within the context of a shell.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published