USN-629-1: Thunderbird vulnerabilities

25 July 2008

Thunderbird vulnerabilities

Reduce your security exposure

Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Releases

Packages

Details

Various flaws were discovered in the browser engine. If a user had
Javascript enabled and were tricked into opening a malicious web
page, an attacker could cause a denial of service via application
crash, or possibly execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the
user invoking the program. (CVE-2008-2798, CVE-2008-2799)

It was discovered that Thunderbird would allow non-privileged XUL
documents to load chrome scripts from the fastload file if Javascript
was enabled. This could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary
Javascript code with chrome privileges. (CVE-2008-2802)

A flaw was discovered in Thunderbird that allowed overwriting trusted
objects via mozIJSSubScriptLoader.loadSubScript(). If a user had
Javascript enabled and was tricked into opening a malicious web page,
an attacker could execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the
user invoking the program. (CVE-2008-2803)

Daniel Glazman found that an improperly encoded .properties file in
an add-on can result in uninitialized memory being used. If a user
were tricked into installing a malicious add-on, Thunderbird may be
able to see data from other programs. (CVE-2008-2807)

John G. Myers discovered a weakness in the trust model used by
Thunderbird regarding alternate names on self-signed certificates.
If a user were tricked into accepting a certificate containing
alternate name entries, an attacker could impersonate another
server. (CVE-2008-2809)

A vulnerability was discovered in the block reflow code of
Thunderbird. If a user enabled Javascript, this vulnerability could
be used by an attacker to cause a denial of service via application
crash, or execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user
invoking the program. (CVE-2008-2811)

A flaw was discovered in the browser engine. A variable could be made
to overflow causing Thunderbird to crash. If a user enable Javascript
and was tricked into opening a malicious web page, an attacker could
cause a denial of service or possibly execute arbitrary code with the
privileges of the user invoking the program. (CVE-2008-2785)

Mozilla developers audited the MIME handling code looking for similar
vulnerabilities to the previously fixed CVE-2008-0304, and changed
several function calls to use safer versions of string routines.

Reduce your security exposure

Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

Learn more about Ubuntu Pro

Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 8.04
Ubuntu 7.10
Ubuntu 7.04
Ubuntu 6.06

After a standard system upgrade you need to restart Thunderbird to
effect the necessary changes.

Related notices