Privilege escalation vulnerability was found in all installations having Exim set-uid root and using 'perl_startup'. Any user who can start an instance of Exim can gain root privileges. https://lists.exim.org/lurker/message/20160302.191005.a72d8433.en.html
Created exim tracking bugs for this issue: Affects: fedora-all [bug 1314294] Affects: epel-all [bug 1314295]
Related upstream commits: http://git.exim.org/exim.git/commitdiff/43ba2742c700d625dcdcdaf7bbadc2f72776854a http://git.exim.org/exim.git/commitdiff/677c582e4da6b30f5467964bbd105c111247df25 http://git.exim.org/exim.git/commitdiff/dd90c19962a63fe966e17c75b4a36639302d1e67 External Reference: http://exim.org/static/doc/CVE-2016-1531.txt
The exim mail server is not shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and 7. It is included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5, but is not the default mail server. The default configuration of exim in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is not affected by this issue, as it does not use 'perl_startup'. This feature is not required by any other Red Hat Enterprise Linux component. If configured to use perl_startup, exim version in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5 are affected by this issue. Removal of all perl_startup directives from exim.conf mitigates this issue. As affected products are in the phases of their life cycles when only Critical impact security fixes are guaranteed to be released; the default and/or typical configurations of the component within products are not affected; and as the fix introduces behavioural change that is documented as likely to break existing configurations, even those not affected by this issue, there is currently no plan to fix this issue in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5.
exim-4.86.2-1.fc23 has been pushed to the Fedora 23 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
exim-4.85.2-1.fc22 has been pushed to the Fedora 22 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
exim-4.84.2-1.el7 has been pushed to the Fedora EPEL 7 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
exim-4.84.2-1.el6 has been pushed to the Fedora EPEL 6 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
Statement: This issue affects the version of exim as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5. However, the default configurations are not affected, as they do not use 'perl_startup' directive. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 is now in Extended Life Cycle phase of the support and maintenance life cycle, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is now in Production 3 Phase of the support and maintenance life cycle. This issue is not currently planned to be addressed in future updates. For additional information, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Life Cycle: https://access.redhat.com/support/policy/updates/errata/.