USN-297-1: Thunderbird vulnerabilities
14 June 2006
Thunderbird vulnerabilities
Releases
Details
Jonas Sicking discovered that under some circumstances persisted XUL
attributes are associated with the wrong URL. A malicious web site
could exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of
the user. (MFSA 2006-35, CVE-2006-2775)
Paul Nickerson discovered that content-defined setters on an object
prototype were getting called by privileged UI code. It was
demonstrated that this could be exploited to run arbitrary web script
with full user privileges (MFSA 2006-37, CVE-2006-2776).
Mikolaj Habryn discovered a buffer overflow in the crypto.signText()
function. By sending an email with malicious JavaScript to an user,
and that user enabled JavaScript in Thunderbird (which is not the
default and not recommended), this could potentially be exploited to
execute arbitrary code with the user's privileges. (MFSA 2006-38,
CVE-2006-2778)
The Mozilla developer team discovered several bugs that lead to
crashes with memory corruption. These might be exploitable by
malicious web sites to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of
the user. (MFSA 2006-32, CVE-2006-2779, CVE-2006-2780)
Masatoshi Kimura discovered a memory corruption (double-free) when
processing a large VCard with invalid base64 characters in it. By
sending a maliciously crafted set of VCards to a user, this could
potentially be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the user's
privileges. (MFSA 2006-40, CVE-2006-2781)
Masatoshi Kimura found a way to bypass web input sanitizers which
filter out JavaScript. By inserting 'Unicode Byte-order-Mark (BOM)'
characters into the HTML code (e. g. '
might not recognize the tags anymore; however, Thunderbird would still
execute them since BOM markers are filtered out before processing a
mail containing JavaScript. (MFSA 2006-42, CVE-2006-2783)
Kazuho Oku discovered various ways to perform HTTP response smuggling
when used with certain proxy servers. Due to different interpretation
of nonstandard HTTP headers in Thunderbird and the proxy server, a
malicious HTML email can exploit this to send back two responses to one
request. The second response could be used to steal login cookies or
other sensitive data from another opened web site. (MFSA 2006-33,
CVE-2006-2786)
It was discovered that JavaScript run via EvalInSandbox() can escape
the sandbox. Malicious scripts received in emails containing
JavaScript could use these privileges to execute arbitrary code with
the user's privileges. (MFSA 2006-31, CVE-2006-2787)
The "enigmail" plugin has been updated to work with the new
Thunderbird version.
Update instructions
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
Ubuntu 6.06
-
mozilla-thunderbird
-
1.5.0.4-0ubuntu6.06
-
mozilla-thunderbird-enigmail
-
2:0.94-0ubuntu4.1
After a standard system upgrade you need to restart Thunderbird to
effect the necessary changes.
Please note that Thunderbird 1.0.8 in Ubuntu 5.10 and Ubuntu 5.04 are
also affected by these problems. Updates for these Ubuntu releases
will be delayed due to upstream dropping support for this Thunderbird
version. We strongly advise that you disable JavaScript to disable the
attack vectors for most vulnerabilities if you use one of these Ubuntu
versions.