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Vulnerability DatabaseCVE-2019-12420

CVE-2019-12420: 
Apache SpamAssassin vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Overview

CVE-2019-12420 affects Apache SpamAssassin versions before 3.4.3. The vulnerability was discovered in 2019 and disclosed on December 12, 2019. This security issue affects the core functionality of SpamAssassin, a widely-used Perl-based spam filter using text analysis (Apache Announcement).

Technical details

The vulnerability allows specially crafted messages to be processed in a way that causes excessive resource consumption in SpamAssassin. The issue specifically relates to how SpamAssassin handles multipart messages. The exact technical details were not publicly disclosed to prevent exploitation (OSS Security).

Impact

When exploited, this vulnerability can result in a denial of service condition by causing SpamAssassin to consume excessive system resources when processing specially crafted messages (Debian Security, Ubuntu Security).

Mitigation and workarounds

The recommended mitigation is to upgrade to Apache SpamAssassin version 3.4.3 or later. Various Linux distributions have also released security updates to address this vulnerability, including Ubuntu (versions 19.10, 19.04, 18.04, and 16.04) and Debian (stretch and buster) (Ubuntu Security, Debian Security).

Additional resources

Source: This report was generated using AI

Related Apache SpamAssassin vulnerabilities:

CVE ID

Severity

Score

Technologies

Component name

CISA KEV exploit

Has fix

Published date

CVE-2020-1946CRITICAL9.8
  • Apache SpamAssassinApache SpamAssassin
  • perl-Mail-SpamAssassin-Plugin-iXhash2
NoYesMar 25, 2021
CVE-2020-1931HIGH8.1
  • Apache SpamAssassinApache SpamAssassin
  • spamassassin
NoYesJan 30, 2020
CVE-2020-1930HIGH8.1
  • Apache SpamAssassinApache SpamAssassin
  • spamassassin-debugsource
NoYesJan 30, 2020
CVE-2019-12420HIGH7.5
  • Apache SpamAssassinApache SpamAssassin
  • perl-Mail-SpamAssassin
NoYesDec 12, 2019
CVE-2018-11805MEDIUM6.7
  • Apache SpamAssassinApache SpamAssassin
  • perl-Mail-SpamAssassin
NoYesDec 12, 2019

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