Image:Sendmail_logo.gif '''Sendmail''' is an Open_source Mail_transfer_agent (MTA): a Computer_program for the routing and delivery of Email. Its authors released the current version, Sendmail '''8.13.5''', on September_16, 2005. == History and use == A descendant of the original ARPANET ''Delivermail'' application, Sendmail is a remarkably flexible program, supporting many kinds of mail transfer and delivery including the overwhelmingly popular SMTP. The original version of Sendmail was written by Eric_Allman in the early 1980s at UC_Berkeley, who had also written Delivermail previously. Delivermail was shipped in 1979 with 4.0 and 4.1 BSD. Sendmail was shipped with BSD 4.1c in 1983 (the first BSD version to include TCP/IP). Sendmail has been widely criticized as slow, overcomplicated, insecure, and difficult to maintain by comparison with other MTAs such as Exim, Postfix and Qmail. Nevertheless it remains the most popular MTA on the Internet (albeit not as popular as it once was), a fact almost certainly due in part to its position as the standard MTA under most variants of the Unix operating system. According to one study, as of November 2001 approximately 42% of the publicly reachable mail servers on the Internet were running Sendmail. Sendmail is often run as the Superuser, representing a severe security threat if compromised. This is despite the recommendation since 2001 by its authors that it be run as an unprivileged user. Sendmail version 8.12 (and later) is no longer installed by default as Setuid root. Sendmail-8.12 as of September 2001 introduced support for Milter - external mail filtering programs/servers consulted during SMTP session. In 2003 three serious vulnerabilities were detected and fixed in Sendmail version 8. Two of them were message-oriented and could be exploited even on servers with no direct access from Internet. In 1988 the Morris_worm used vulnerabilities in Sendmail and other programs to spread itself. == Sendmail X == The next generation of Sendmail is called sendmail X (previously it was called sendmail 9). It is not an evolution of Sendmail version 8. Although it is purported to be a "complete new design", its design is in fact pretty much an exact copy of the design of Postfix (''master'' becomes MCP, ''smtpd'' becomes SMTPS, ''local'' becomes LDA, ''smtp'' becomes SMTPC, ''trivial-rewrite'' becomes AR, and ''qmgr'' becomes QMGR). Some have speculated that this, in conjunction with the fact that Postfix exists and is in production use whereas Sendmail X is still being developed, has only accelerated the decline of Sendmail. Sendmail X is available for use. The latest release of Sendmail X (smX-0.0.0.0) was made available at October_302005. === Releases === * smX-0.0.0.0 2005-10-30 == Sendmail-8 == === Releases === * Sendmail-8.13.5 2005-09-16 * Sendmail-8.13.0 2004-06-20 * Sendmail-8.12.0 2001-09-08 * Sendmail-8.11.0 2000-07-19 * Sendmail-8.10.0 2000-03-01 * Sendmail-8.9.0 1998-05-19 * Sendmail-8.8.0 1996-09-26 * Sendmail-8.7 1995-09-16 * Sendmail-8.6 1993-10-05 * ... * Sendmail-8.1 1993-06-07 - 4.4BSD freeze. No semantic changes. ''The information is based on RELEASE_NOTES file from sendmail distribution.'' === Vulnerabilities === * {{Web reference|title=CA-2003-25 Buffer Overflow in Sendmail|work=CERT Advisories|URL=http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-25.html|date=January 7|year=2005}} * {{Web reference|title=CA-2003-12 Buffer Overflow in Sendmail|work=CERT Advisories|URL=http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-12.html|date=January 7|year=2005}} * {{Web reference|title=CA-2003-07 Remote Buffer Overflow in Sendmail|work=CERT Advisories|URL=http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2003-07.html|date=January 7|year=2005}} * {{Web reference|title=CA-1997-05 MIME Conversion Buffer Overflow in Sendmail Versions 8.8.3 and 8.8.4|work=CERT Advisories|URL=http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1997-05.html * {{Web reference|title=CA-1996-25 Sendmail Group Permissions Vulnerability|work=CERT Advisories|URL=http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1996-25.html|date=January 7|year=2005}} * {{Web reference|title=CA-1996-24 Sendmail Daemon Mode Vulnerability|work=CERT Advisories|URL=http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1996-24.html|date=January 7|year=2005}} * {{Web reference|title=CA-1996-20 Sendmail Vulnerabilities|work=CERT Advisories|URL=http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-1996-20.html|date=January 7|year=2005}} == Further reading == * {{book reference|Title=sendmail, 3rd Edition|Author=Bryan Costales with Eric Allman|Publisher=O'Reilly and Associates|Year=December 2002|ID=ISBN 1-56592-839-3}} — This is the Sendmail "bible" containing 1232 pages about Sendmail. It is also known as "The Bat Book", because of the picture on its cover. The 1st Edition was published in November 1993. * {{book reference|Title=sendmail 8.13 Companion|Author=Bryan Costales, George Jansen, Claus Assmann, Gregory Shapiro|Publisher=O'Reilly and Associates|Year=September 2004|ID=ISBN 0-596-00845-7}} — A companion to ''sendmail, 3rd Edition'', this book documents the improvements in V8.13 in parallel with its release. * {{book reference|Title=sendmail Cookbook|Author=Craig Hunt|Publisher=O'Reilly|Year=December 2003|ID=ISBN 0-596-00471-0}} * {{book reference|Title=sendmail Performance Tuning|Author=Nick Christenson|Publisher=Addison_Wesley|Year=2002-09-13|ID=ISBN 0-321-11570-8}} == External links == * Sendmail Consortium, sendmail.org * Sendmail, Inc., sendmail.com * Daniel J. Bernstein, Internet host SMTP server survey, November 2001 * Mike Brodbelt, A brief history of mail * Sendmail X architecture overview * Postfix architecture overview * {{citenewsauthor|url=http://technetcast.ddj.com/tnc_program.html?program_id=32|title=History of Sendmail: Interview with Eric Allman|org=Dr. Dobb's Journal|date=1999|given=Philippe|surname=Lourier}} * {{citepaper|Author=Eric Allman ''et al.''|URL=http://www.sendmail.org/~gshapiro/Sendmail-8.10.Paper.pdf|Title=Sendmail Evolution: 8.10 and Beyond|PublishYear=1999}} — presented at the USENIX Annual Technical Conference * {{citenewsauthor|url=http://linux.sys-con.com/read/33904.htm|title=A Talk with the Father of sendmail|org=LinuxWorld|date=2003-08-11|given=Alan|surname=Williamson}} Category:Mail_transport_agents De:Sendmail Es:Sendmail Fr:Sendmail Ja:Sendmail Pt:Sendmail Ru:Sendmail Fi:Sendmail