COMMAND
CGImail
SYSTEMS AFFECTED
Stalker's CGImail
PROBLEM
Sverre H. Huseby found following. Stalker Lab's Mailers package
for Windows NT contains the CGImail.exe program, which is used to
convert the contents of an HTML form to an email. The program
takes a template file on the web server disk, and substitutes
special markup ("variables") with values from the form before
sending the mail. Attachments are also supported.
Unfortunately, every part of the mail sending process is
controlled by (possibly hidden) values in the form. A malicious
user may thus save the web page to disk, modify the recipient
$To$ -variable, and the template $File$ or $Attach$ -variable,
and trick the program into sending any file from the web server
disk to himself.
SOLUTION
Sverre has tested this positively on an unknown version of
CGImail.exe (web server outside of his control, problem since
fixed by removing CGImail.exe). The docs (cgimail.txt) for
version 1.12 (1996-12-17) available from
http://www.winsite.com/info/pc/winnt/netutil/sm112.zip/
indicate that the same problem exists with that version. The
Stalker Lab web page at
http://www.stalkerlab.ch/SMailers/index.html
is unreachable (No route to host), but a cached version at Google
shows that a version of at least 1.20 is now available.
The 1.12 docs has a section about "security": CGImail.exe may use
the CGI HTTP_REFERER environment variable to make sure the page
containing the form comes from the correct web server. No
solution to the problem is known, except for disabling (and
deleting!) the program entirely.