Check Point Advisories

MailEnable SMTP Authentication Buffer Overflow (CVE-2005-1781)

Vulnerability
Protection

Check Point Reference:	CPAI-2005-247
Date Published:	19 Oct 2009
Severity:	High
Last Updated:	Monday 19 October, 2009
Source:
Industry Reference:	CVE-2005-1781
Protection Provided by:	Security Gateway R81, R80, R77, R75
Who is Vulnerable?
Vulnerability Description	MailEnable is an email server suite for the Microsoft Windows platform. The product supports a number of popular mail transfer protocols such as SMTP, POP3 and IMAP. The authentication extensions to the SMTP protocol are also supported by the product. There exists a vulnerability in the SMTP authentication mechanism of MailEnable. The flaw is caused by insufficient boundary checking when handling the username argument in an AUTH command. A successful attacker can exploit this vulnerability to terminate the vulnerable service or execute arbitrary code with System privileges. In a simple attack case aimed at creating a denial of service condition, the affected service will terminate. If the service is not configured to restart automatically, then the MailEnable SMTP functionality will be unavailable until the server is restarted manually. In a more sophisticated attack scenario, where the malicious user is successful in injecting and executing supplied code, the behaviour of the system is dependent on the nature the injected code. Any code injected into the vulnerable component would execute in the security context of the service process, normally System.

Protection Overview

This protection will detect and block attempts to exploit this vulnerability

In order for the protection to be activated, update your Security Gateway product to the latest IPS update. For information on how to update IPS, go to SBP-2006-05, click on Protection tab and select the version of your choice.

Security Gateway R80 / R77 / R75

In the IPS tab, click Protections and find the MailEnable SMTP Authentication Buffer Overflow protection using the Search tool and Edit the protection's settings.
Install policy on all Security Gateways.

This protection's log will contain the following information:

Attack Name: SMTP Protection Violation.
Attack Information: MailEnable SMTP authentication buffer overflow