Bug#406686: exim4: Client Auth Can't Handle Special Characters in Passwords

[Steaphan Greene]

Package: exim4
Version: 4.63-12
Severity: important


There seems to be no way to handle a password with special characters in 
/etc/exim4/passwd.client.  I can find no docs on this but have confirmed 
that many special characters (including "^" and "$") in a password cause 
exim4 to not authenticate as a client, and they don't seem to be 
escapable via the normal means.


-- Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.63 #1 built 20-Dec-2006 17:15:23
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge 2006
Berkeley DB: Sleepycat Software: Berkeley DB 4.3.29: (September  6, 2005)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 GnuTLS move_frozen_messages
Lookups: lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmnz dsearch nis nis0 passwd
Authenticators: cram_md5 plaintext
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Fixed never_users: 0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file is /var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
# /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
#
# Edit this file and /etc/mailname by hand and execute update-exim4.conf
# yourself or use 'dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config'
#
# Please note that this is _not_ a dpkg-conffile and that automatic changes
# to this file might happen. The code handling this will honor your local
# changes, so this is usually fine, but will break local schemes that mess
# around with multiple versions of the file.
#
# update-exim4.conf uses this file to determine variable values to replace
# the DEBCONFsomethingDEBCONF strings in the configuration template files.
#
# Most settings found in here do have corresponding questions in the
# Debconf configuration, but not all of them.
#
# This is a Debian specific file

dc_eximconfig_configtype='smarthost'
dc_other_hostnames='sentry.cs.binghamton.edu'
dc_local_interfaces='127.0.0.1'
dc_readhost='cs.binghamton.edu'
dc_relay_domains=''
dc_minimaldns='false'
dc_relay_nets=''
dc_smarthost='mail.cs.binghamton.edu'
CFILEMODE='644'
dc_use_split_config='false'
dc_hide_mailname='true'
dc_mailname_in_oh='true'
dc_localdelivery='mail_spool'
mailname:sentry.cs.binghamton.edu

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: powerpc (ppc)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.17-2-powerpc-smp
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages exim4 depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]         1.5.11     Debian configuration management sy
ii  exim4-base                    4.63-12    support files for all exim MTA (v4
ii  exim4-daemon-light            4.63-12    lightweight exim MTA (v4) daemon

exim4 recommends no packages.

-- debconf information:
  exim4/drec: