Overview
The Mail application supplied with Apple's Mac OS X operating system identifies the system from which any electronic mail is sent.
Description
Mac OS X includes the Mail application for handling electronic mail. This application does include the Media Access Control (MAC) address of a network interface in the Message-ID header, which discloses the system which sent the mail. |
Impact
This flaw makes it possible to identify the system that has sent a given piece of electronic mail with the Mail application. An intruder may use this information, which is usually transmitted in cleartext and received on a remote system, to deduce a valid MAC address to use on a foreign network in order to gain access. This value may also be used to deduce the sender of anonymized or privatized mail. |
Solution
Apply a patch Apple advises all users to apply Apple Security Update 2005-001, as it fixes this flaw and other critical security flaws. More information can be found at: |
Vendor Information
CVSS Metrics
| Group | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|
| Base | ||
| Temporal | ||
| Environmental |
References
Acknowledgements
Thanks to Apple Product Security for reporting this vulnerability. Apple, in turn, gives thanks to Carl Purvis for originally reporting this vulnerability.
This document was written by Ken MacInnis.
Other Information
| CVE IDs: | CVE-2005-0127 |
| Severity Metric: | 2.81 |
| Date Public: | 2005-01-25 |
| Date First Published: | 2005-01-31 |
| Date Last Updated: | 2005-01-31 19:48 UTC |
| Document Revision: | 11 |