Re: CVE request: sSMTP doesn't validate server certificates

[Vincent Danen <vdanen () redhat com>]

* [2012-10-10 11:59:13 +0200] Laurent Bigonville wrote:

> Hi,
>
> It seems that sSMTP is not checking the server certificate when
> connecting. This is quite annoying as one of the main ssmtp purpose is
> to be used on satellite systems that could be connected to untrusted
> networks.
>
> This has been reported (with a proposed patch) to the Debian BTS (see
> [0])
>
> Could you please allocate a CVE number for this?
>
> Cheers
>
> Laurent Bigonville
>
> [0] http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=662960

I'm not sure it deserves one.

If you look at the TLS file in the source tarball, it indicates that
checking server certificates is not implemented and is something to add
in the future:

TODO:
* Check server certificate for changes and notify about it.
* Diffrent Certificate and Key file?

Since sSMTP clearly indicates that this feature is missing and
unsupported, then it was designed to _not_ do certificate checking.
Regardless of how good or bad that is, it was a design choice (to leave
it for a later date), and it's also clearly documented.

To me, that doesn't seem like a security flaw (as in sSMTP was designed
to check certificates and didn't or didn't do a good job of it).

--
Vincent Danen / Red Hat Security Response Team