Emacs, XEmacs: Format string vulnerabilities in movemail — GLSA 200502-20

The movemail utility shipped with Emacs and XEmacs contains several format string vulnerabilities, potentially leading to the execution of arbitrary code.

Affected packages

Package 	app-editors/emacs on all architectures
Affected versions 	< 21.4
Unaffected versions 	>= 21.4
< 19
Package 	app-editors/xemacs on all architectures
Affected versions 	< 21.4.15-r3
Unaffected versions 	>= 21.4.15-r3

Background

GNU Emacs and XEmacs are highly extensible and customizable text editors. movemail is an Emacs utility that can fetch mail on remote mail servers.

Description

Max Vozeler discovered that the movemail utility contains several format string errors.

Impact

An attacker could set up a malicious POP server and entice a user to connect to it using movemail, resulting in the execution of arbitrary code with the rights of the victim user.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Emacs users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-editors/emacs-21.4"

All XEmacs users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-editors/xemacs-21.4.15-r3"

References

    CAN-2005-0100