1. Ubuntu Security Notices
  2. USN-2147-1

USN-2147-1: Mutt vulnerability

Publication date

13 March 2014

Overview

The mutt mail client could be made to crash or run programs as your login if it opened a specially crafted email.

Releases

Packages

  • mutt - text-based mailreader supporting MIME, GPG, PGP and threading

Details

Beatrice Torracca and Evgeni Golov discovered a buffer overflow
in mutt while expanding addresses when parsing email headers. An
attacker could specially craft an email to cause mutt to crash,
resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code
with the privileges of the user invoking mutt.

Beatrice Torracca and Evgeni Golov discovered a buffer overflow
in mutt while expanding addresses when parsing email headers. An
attacker could specially craft an email to cause mutt to crash,
resulting in a denial of service, or possibly execute arbitrary code
with the privileges of the user invoking mutt.

Update instructions

After a standard system update you need to restart mutt to make all the necessary changes.

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu Release Package Version
13.10 saucy mutt-patched –  1.5.21-6.4ubuntu1.1
mutt –  1.5.21-6.4ubuntu1.1
12.10 quantal mutt-patched –  1.5.21-6ubuntu0.1
mutt –  1.5.21-6ubuntu0.1
12.04 precise mutt-patched –  1.5.21-5ubuntu2.1
mutt –  1.5.21-5ubuntu2.1
10.04 lucid mutt-patched –  1.5.20-7ubuntu1.2
mutt –  1.5.20-7ubuntu1.2

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References

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