Re: rspamc / rspamd with getmail

Charles Cazabon <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.mail.getmail.user
Message-ID <[email protected]>
Elimar Riesebieter <[email protected]> wrote:
> * [email protected] dyn <[email protected]> [2020-05-21 02:22 +0200]:
> > Configuration error: refuse to invoke external commands as root by default
> 
> Running getmail as root is a bad idea! Either run it as $USER or
> create a user, i.e uid=getmail ; gid=getmail to run it systemwide.

Not sure, but I think Elimar meant to link to:
http://pyropus.ca/software/getmail/troubleshooting.html#errmsg-config-root-commands 

To expand on this just a little bit: when you use an external filter program
or external delivery agent, you're taking untrusted data from the net (the
email content, under the control of a possible attacker) and feeding it as
input to that program.  For various reasons, getmail itself is unlikely to be
susceptible to hostile data, but the external programs you feed it to -
especially if they're doing text processing and are written in an "unsafe"
language - may not be so immune.

If you have getmail invoke external commands and run them as root, you're
betting your whole system on that command not having any vulnerabilities
dealing with untrusted data, rather than just a possible compromise of the
account you run getmail as.

Charles
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Charles Cazabon
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