(RHSA-2003:074) sendmail security update

Sendmail is a widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA) which is included
in all Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions.

During a code audit of Sendmail by ISS, a critical vulnerability was
uncovered that affects unpatched versions of Sendmail prior to version
8.12.8. A remote attacker can send a carefully crafted email message
which, when processed by sendmail, causes arbitrary code to be
executed as root.

We are advised that a proof-of-concept exploit is known to exist, but
is not believed to be in the wild.

Since this is a message-based vulnerability, MTAs other than Sendmail
may pass on the carefully crafted message. This means that unpatched
versions of Sendmail inside a network could still be at risk even if
they do not accept external connections directly.

All users are advised to update to these erratum packages which contain
a backported patch to correct this vulnerability.

Red Hat would like to thank Eric Allman for his assistance with this
vulnerability.