Title

The SMTP service must not have the EXPN feature active. (Cat III impact)

Discussion

The SMTP EXPN function allows an attacker to determine if an account exists on a system, providing significant assistance to a brute force attack on user accounts. EXPN may also provide additional information concerning users on the system, such as the full names of account owners.

Check Content

This vulnerability is applicable only to sendmail. If Postfix is the SMTP service for the system this will never be a finding. Procedure: Determine if EXPN is disabled. # grep -v "^#" /etc/mail/sendmail.cf |grep -i PrivacyOptions If nothing is returned or the returned line does not contain "noexpn", this is a finding.

Fix Text

Rebuild /etc/mail/sendmail.cf with the "noexpn" Privacy Flag set. Procedure: Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc resetting the Privacy Flags to the default: define('confPRIVACYFLAGS', 'authwarnings,novrfy,noexpn,restrictqrun')dnl Rebuild the sendmail.cf file with: # make -C /etc/mail Restart the sendmail service. # service sendmail restart

Additional Identifiers

Rule ID: SV-45872r1_rule

Vulnerability ID: V-4692

Group Title: GEN004660

Expert Comments

CCIs tied to check.

Controls tied to check. These are derived from the CCIs shown above.