On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 02:45:23AM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> On 2013-04-23 19:13:54 -0500, Derek Martin wrote:
> > On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 11:58:05PM +0200, Vincent Lefevre wrote:
> > > If the goal is to create a temporary file to view an attachment, the
> > > contents of the attachment (and/or the mail itself) can be used as a
> > > source of random data. I suppose that the attacker isn't the one who
> > > sent the mail in question and the mailbox isn't public.
> > 
> > You can't suppose that. :)  The message may very well be one that
> > was sent by the attacker, specifically to get the user to fall into
> > his trap.
> 
> If the attacker doesn't want the user to read his attachments, I don't
> see the point of sending him a mail in the first place. :)

Cute, but DoS is not the only vector as you well know.  Using the
message store or any part of the message store is not a workable
solution.  It's (in general) data from an untrusted source and must be
treated as such.  In particular, untrusted data must not be used as a
source of input of any sort for functions used to secure the system.
Doing so creates a potential attack vector.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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