sendmail, 4th Edition

The F Command—File Form

The file form of the F configuration command (The F Class Command on page 857) can be used to read sensitive information. That command looks like this in the configuration file:

FX/path pat

This form is used to read class macro entries from files. It can cause problems through a misunderstanding of the scanf(3) pattern pat. The /path is the name of the file, and the optional pat is a pattern to be used by scanf(3) (scanf(3) variations on page 858).

To illustrate the risk of the pat, consider the following configuration file entry:

Fw/etc/myhostnames %[^#]

Normally, the F command reads only the first whitespace-delimited word from each line of the file. But if the optional pattern pat is specified, the F command instead reads one or more words from each line based on the nature of the pattern. The pattern is used by scanf(3) to extract words, and the specific pattern used here, [^#], causes scanf(3) to read everything up to the first comment character (the #) from each line. This pat allows multiple hostnames to be conveniently listed on each line of the file. Now assume that a new administrator, who is not very familiar with sendmail, decides to add an F command to gather a list of UUCP hosts from the /etc/uucp/Systems file. Being a novice, the new administrator copies the existing entry for use with the new file:

FU/etc/uucp/Systems %[^#]

This is the same pattern that was correctly used for /etc/myhostnames. Unfortunately, the Systems file contains more than just ...