Re: exim

Stuart Henderson <stu@spacehopper.org> wrote:

> With OpenBSD release fast approaching and considering the lack of solid
> information about the vulnerabilities, I think we should probably mark
> mail/exim BROKEN for now.

That's almost too kind.

> And also consider whether we want to keep this in ports at all...
> The response to this was much weaker than I'd expect from maintainers
> of software like this (note that it is a huge setuid root binary so
> it'd really be nice if they were a bit more active on that front)

Lacking any elements of privsep design. In this regard, it is a very
strange piece of software.

sendmail was so terrible decades ago, that qmail showed up as
privsep-based-upon-file-moves. That was privsep program #2. Then
postfix, called vmailer at the time, showed up with privsep via other
forms of object movement, which is privsep program #3. (openssh then
showed up as privsep program #4. In my version of history, privsep
program #1 is the BSD auth subsystem, which is a piece of libc executing
gid-hidden setuid/setgid-if-needed service programs with their own
address spaces). Many years later, sendmail even grew some aspects of
privsep. But exim? No...... it's a newer piece of software using
old design rules.

It's a bad piece of software to expose users to, via the ports/packages.
Perhaps right after the ides of March next year, we should just move exim
into base.