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Re: Please update courier security tracker information



Bonaccorso,

On Monday, June 30, 2025 10:58:37 PM Mountain Standard Time Soren Stoutner 
wrote:
> On Monday, June 30, 2025 10:26:04 PM Mountain Standard Time Salvatore
> 
> Bonaccorso wrote:
> > Hi Soren,
> > 
> > On Thu, Jun 12, 2025 at 11:39:24AM -0700, Soren Stoutner wrote:
> > > On Wednesday, June 11, 2025 9:59:24 PM Mountain Standard Time Salvatore
> > > 
> > > Bonaccorso wrote:
> > > > Hi Soren,
> > > > 
> > > > On Wed, Jun 11, 2025 at 03:11:53PM -0700, Soren Stoutner wrote:
> > > > > The security tracker for courier list two pieces of inaccurate
> > > 
> > > information.
> > > 
> > > > > https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/source-package/courier
> > > > > 
> > > > > 1.  CVE-2004-2313 was fixed in Debian a long time ago.  I think this
> 
> was
> 
> > > not
> > > 
> > > > > auto-detected because SqWebMail uses a different version numbering
> > > > > scheme
> > > > > than the source package it is built from.  CVE-2004-2313 affected
> > > 
> > > SqWebMail
> > > 
> > > > > 3.4.1 through 3.6.1.  The current version in Debian is 
6.2.9+1.4.1-2.
> > > > > 
> > > > > https://packages.debian.org/unstable/sqwebmail
> > > > > 
> > > > > 2.  It is unclear if CVE-2005-1308 was ever actually a security bug.
> > > > > The
> > > > > Debian bug report doesn’t think so.
> > > > > 
> > > > > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=307575
> > > > > 
> > > > > The CVE submission doesn’t list any vulnerable or fixed versions, 
and
> > > > > all
> > > > > the
> > > > > links on the CVE are either dead or unuseful.
> > > > > 
> > > > > https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2005-1308
> > > > 
> > > > Both are amrked unimportant for certain reasons. For the former if you
> > > > have an exact fixed version where the fix landed in a unstable upload
> > > > then we can update the metadata. Just adding a fixed version on latest
> > > > is wrong.
> > > 
> > > CVE-2004-2313 was fixed in src:courier 0.47-3 which shipped SqWebMail
> 
> 4.0.7,
> 
> > > which is newer than the last vulnerable version 3.6.1.
> > 
> > This is quite unlikely if you compare the changes between 0.47-2 and
> > 0.47-3 which only fixed a typo closing #276774. And furthermore we
> > cannot and will not trust CVE description for version ranges as they
> > may only reflect a known current state at a given point in time,
> > sometimes they are accurate, sometimes they are not, so we need a
> > clear evidence where the fix landed, then we can update the metadata.
> > 
> > If not we err on the safe side. And again note that those CVEs are
> > marked unimportant.
> > 
> > If you can point me to the version change after SqWebMail 3.6.1
> > implementing the said security feature in the NOTE we can try to take
> > an effort to correct this historic metadata.
> 
> When I wrote the above I was indicating that 0.47-3 was the first fixed
> version that I can verify shipped in Debian.  This came from:
> 
> https://snapshot.debian.org/binary/sqwebmail/
> 
> This is so long ago that the information about the old packages is sporadic 
as
> it jumps from 0.37.3-2.9 to 0.47-3.  So, perhaps my previous email should
> have more accurately said that the fix landed sometime between 0.37.3-2.9 
and
> 0.47-3, but for certain it was contained in 0.47-3.
> 
> This can be seen by downloading both packages and looking at the details
> inside them.
> 
> 0.37.3-2.9:
> 
> /usr/share/doc/sqwebmail/changelog.gz shows that this shipped SqWebMail 
3.3.2,
> released on 2002-02-25
> 
> This version was not affected by the CVE, as it was introduced in version
> 3.4.1.  Presumably, Debian at one time did ship an affected version, 
probably
> only in testing and unstable, but this is not preserved on
> snapshot.debian.org.
> 
> 0.47-3:
> 
> /usr/share/doc/sqwebmail.changelog.gz shows that this shipped a version of
> SqWebMail three commits past 4.0.7, dated 2004-09-02.  This includes the 
fixed
> version of 3.6.1
> 
> The commit history on GitHub doesn’t go back that far, because it didn’t 
exist
> as a project on GitHub in 2003 (GitHub wasn’t even founded until 2008).  So,
> it is hard to know exactly what was changed in each commit.
> 
> https://github.com/svarshavchik/courier
> 
> But it appears this commit from 2003-10-10 described in the 0.47-3 changelog
> is what fixed the CVE:
> 
> "sqwebmail.c (error3): More informative error messages.”
> 
> This tracks with the description of the CVE:
> 
> Inter7 SqWebMail 3.4.1 through 3.6.1 generates different error messages for
> incorrect passwords versus correct passwords on non-mail-enabled accounts
> (such as root), which allows remote attackers to guess the root password via
> brute force attacks.
> 
> Note that the CVE was filed in 2004, after the fix had already been applied 
to
> the source in 2003.  This was why the person filing the CVE could 
confidently
> include the first and last affected version at the time of the filing.

Do you have any further questions about the additional information I provided 
in the previous email?


-- 
Soren Stoutner
soren@debian.org

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