Sendmail warning

[Oscar Castillo Murillo]

I running newaliases in sendmail for HP-UX 11.00 but display of following message

newaliases: cannot open /etc/mail/aliases: Group writable file

-rwxrwxrwx 1 root sys 897 Oct 28 22:57 aliases
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root mail 24576 Nov 10 17:54 aliases.db

[Michael Tully]

The permissions on these files should be like this:

# ll /etc/mail
total 270
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 1127 Aug 19 2003 aliases
-rw-r--r-- 1 root mail 24576 Nov 6 20:23 aliases.db
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 10222 Nov 14 2000 mailcap
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 94283 Apr 30 2002 sendmail.cf
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 732 Aug 31 2003 sendmail.cw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root mail 34 Nov 6 20:23 sendmail.pid
-r--r--r-- 1 bin bin 1012 Nov 14 2000 service.switch

One further thing to note, perhaps you'd better look at other files on your system. It looks to me it could be open slather for anyone wishing to hack your box.

[Steven E. Protter]

Having any world writeable files in the sendmail configuration is considered dangerous. It can allow your machine's sendmail configuration to be compromised by an unpriviledged user.

An example of this would be setting up a sendmail alias that can be used to send spam.

Change the permissions on the files to match those in the prior post and the warning will stop.

SEP

[Oscar Castillo Murillo]

I change of permitions but not resolved the problem

-rw-r--r-- 1 bin bin 897 Oct 28 22:57 aliases
-rw-r--r-- 1 root mail 24576 Nov 10 18:13 aliases.db

Now display of following message

warning: /etc/mail/aliases has world read or write permission. This is unsafe.
warning: /etc/mail/aliases.db has world read or write permission. This is unsafe
.
/etc/mail/aliases: 8 aliases, longest 9 bytes, 112 bytes total

[Lee Tae-kyung]

Hi Oscar,

Did you restart sendmail daemon after you modified the file's permission?

^^

Good day^^

[Steven E. Protter]

There should be no write permissions on those files. root can write even if it owns and does not have write permissions.

Restart the sendmail daemon.

/sbin/init.d/sendmail stop
/sbin/init.d/sendmail start

Now it should stop warning.

SEP

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

Ensure the permissions of /etc and /etc/mail are not set with world write permissions. Also check the home directory of root for appropriate permissions including /.

-Sri

[Oscar Castillo Murillo]

I following your instructions, but the situation continue...see sentences.

# ./S541sendmail stop
kill: 3840: no such process
Killed
# ./S541sendmail start
InterScan Email VirusWall is up and running.
warning: /etc/mail/aliases has world read or write permission. This is unsafe.
warning: /etc/mail/aliases.db has world read or write permission. This is unsafe
.

[Fred Martin_1]

Perhaps the folder itself has wrong permissions?

For me, /etc/mail is:

dr-xr-xr-x bin bin /etc/mail


Fred

[Oscar Castillo Murillo]

The permitions for directory /etc/mail as:

drwxr-xr-x 3 bin bin 1024 Nov 10 17:54 mail

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

Change the permissions to look like

dr-xr-xr-x 2 bin bin 1024 Mar 11 2004 /etc/mail

-Sri

[Oscar Castillo Murillo]

I make the changes but problem persist.

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

How about permissions on / and /etc?. Make sure they look like this.

dr-xr-xr-x 30 bin bin 8192 Nov 10 15:43 /etc
drwxr-xr-x 41 root root 1024 May 5 2004 /


-Sri

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

warning: /etc/mail/aliases has world read or
write permission. This is unsafe.

warning: /etc/mail/aliases.db has world read or write permission. This is unsafe.

Recommended action

Execute the following commands.

# chmod 640 /etc/mail/aliases
# chmod 640 /etc/mail/aliases.db
# sendmail -bi

Best regards,
Robert-Jan