Insecure permissions in fail2ban-client v0.11.2 allows attackers with limited sudo privileges to perform arbitrary operations as root. NOTE: this is disputed by multiple parties because the action for a triggered rule can legitimately be an arbitrary operation as root. Thus, the software is behaving in accordance with its intended privilege model.

fail2ban is a daemon to ban hosts that cause multiple authentication errors. In versions 0.9.7 and prior, 0.10.0 through 0.10.6, and 0.11.0 through 0.11.2, there is a vulnerability that leads to possible remote code execution in the mailing action mail-whois. Command mail from mailutils package used in mail actions like mail-whois can execute command if unescaped sequences (\n~) are available in "foreign" input (for instance in whois output). To exploit the vulnerability, an attacker would need to insert malicious characters into the response sent by the whois server, either via a MITM attack or by taking over a whois server. The issue is patched in versions 0.10.7 and 0.11.3. As a workaround, one may avoid the usage of action mail-whois or patch the vulnerability manually.

server/action.py in Fail2ban before 0.8.8 does not properly handle the content of the matches tag, which might allow remote attackers to trigger unsafe behavior in a custom action file via unspecified symbols in this content.

fail2ban 0.8 and earlier does not properly parse sshd log files, which allows remote attackers to add arbitrary hosts to the /etc/hosts.deny file and cause a denial of service by adding arbitrary IP addresses to the sshd log file, as demonstrated by logging in via ssh with a client protocol version identification containing an IP address string, a different vector than CVE-2006-6302.

In fail2ban 0.10.5 through 1.1.1 before ddd879d, the sshd filter (config/filter.d/sshd.conf) accepts an "on <token>" suffix after the host address. Because OpenSSH logs the offered username verbatim, a remote unauthenticated attacker can use a username such as "x VICTIM-SOURCE-IP-ADDRESS on" to make fail2ban associate failed login attempts with an arbitrary source IP address and ban it (e.g., to block logins from a legitimate user). The default filter mode is affected.

fail2ban 0.7.4 and earlier does not properly parse sshd log files, which allows remote attackers to add arbitrary hosts to the /etc/hosts.deny file and cause a denial of service by adding arbitrary IP addresses to the sshd log file, as demonstrated by logging in via ssh with a login name containing certain strings with an IP address.

The apache-auth.conf, apache-nohome.conf, apache-noscript.conf, and apache-overflows.conf files in Fail2ban before 0.8.10 do not properly validate log messages, which allows remote attackers to block arbitrary IP addresses via certain messages in a request.

config/filter.d/cyrus-imap.conf in the cyrus-imap filter in Fail2ban before 0.8.11 allows remote attackers to trigger the blocking of an arbitrary IP address via a crafted e-mail address that matches an improperly designed regular expression.

config/filter.d/postfix.conf in the postfix filter in Fail2ban before 0.8.11 allows remote attackers to trigger the blocking of an arbitrary IP address via a crafted e-mail address that matches an improperly designed regular expression.

The (1) dshield.conf, (2) mail-buffered.conf, (3) mynetwatchman.conf, and (4) mynetwatchman.conf actions in action.d/ in Fail2ban before 0.8.5 allows local users to write to arbitrary files via a symlink attack on temporary files with predictable names, as demonstrated by /tmp/fail2ban-mail.txt.

The release notes for fail2ban 0.8.8 [1],[2] indicate:

[83109bc] IMPORTANT: escape the content of <matches> (if used in custom action files) since its value could contain arbitrary symbols. Thanks for discovery go to the NBS System security team

This could cause issues on the system running fail2ban as it scans log files, depending on what content is matched. There isn't much more detail about this issue than what is described above, so I think it may largely depend on the type of regexp used (what it matches) and the contents of the log file being scanned (whether or not an attacher could insert something that could be used in a malicious way).

The upstream git commit [3].

[1] https://raw.github.com/fail2ban/fail2ban/master/ChangeLog [2] http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msgid=30193056 [3] https://github.com/fail2ban/fail2ban/commit/83109bc

filter.d/wuftpd.conf in Fail2ban 0.8.3 uses an incorrect regular expression that allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (forced authentication failures) via a crafted reverse-resolved DNS name (rhost) entry that contains a substring that is interpreted as an IP address, a different vulnerability than CVE-2007-4321.