module

Morris Worm sendmail Debug Mode Shell Escape

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Disclosed
1988-11-02
Created
2019-03-19

Description

This module exploits sendmail's well-known historical debug mode to
escape to a shell and execute commands in the SMTP RCPT TO command.

This vulnerability was exploited by the Morris worm in 1988-11-02.
Cliff Stoll reports on the worm in the epilogue of The Cuckoo's Egg.

Currently, only cmd/unix/reverse and cmd/unix/generic are supported.

Authors

Robert Tappan Morris
Cliff Stoll
wvu wvu@metasploit.com

Platform

Unix

Architectures

cmd

References

Module Options

To display the available options, load the module within the Metasploit console and run the commands ‘show options’ or ‘show advanced’:


    msf > use exploit/unix/smtp/morris_sendmail_debug
    msf exploit(morris_sendmail_debug) > show targets
        ...targets...
    msf exploit(morris_sendmail_debug) > set TARGET < target-id >
    msf exploit(morris_sendmail_debug) > show options
        ...show and set options...
    msf exploit(morris_sendmail_debug) > exploit
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