1. Ubuntu Security Notices
  2. USN-200-1

USN-200-1: Thunderbird vulnerabilities

Publication date

11 October 2005

Overview

Thunderbird vulnerabilities

Releases

Details

A buffer overflow was discovered in the XBM image handler. By tricking
an user into opening a specially crafted XBM image, an attacker could
exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
(CAN-2005-2701)

Mats Palmgren discovered a buffer overflow in the Unicode string
parser. Unicode strings that contained “zero-width non-joiner”
characters caused a browser crash, which could possibly even exploited
to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
(CAN-2005-2702)

Georgi Guninski reported an integer overflow in the JavaScript engine.
This could be exploited to run arbitrary code under some conditions.
(CAN-2005-2705)

Peter Zelezny discovered that URLs which are passed to Thunderbird on the
command line are not correctly protected against interpretation by the shell.
If Thunderbird is configured as the default handler for “mailto:” URLs, this
could be exploited to execute arbitrary code...

A buffer overflow was discovered in the XBM image handler. By tricking
an user into opening a specially crafted XBM image, an attacker could
exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
(CAN-2005-2701)

Mats Palmgren discovered a buffer overflow in the Unicode string
parser. Unicode strings that contained “zero-width non-joiner”
characters caused a browser crash, which could possibly even exploited
to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
(CAN-2005-2702)

Georgi Guninski reported an integer overflow in the JavaScript engine.
This could be exploited to run arbitrary code under some conditions.
(CAN-2005-2705)

Peter Zelezny discovered that URLs which are passed to Thunderbird on the
command line are not correctly protected against interpretation by the shell.
If Thunderbird is configured as the default handler for “mailto:” URLs, this
could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with user privileges by tricking
the user into clicking on a specially crafted URL (for example, in an email or
chat client). (CAN-2005-2968)

This update also fixes some less critical issues which are described
at http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/mfsa2005-58.html.
(CAN-2005-2703, CAN-2005-2704, CAN-2005-2706, CAN-2005-2707)

The “enigmail” plugin has been updated to work with the new
Thunderbird and Mozilla versions.

Update instructions

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

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

Ubuntu Release Package Version
5.04 hoary mozilla-thunderbird – 
4.10 warty mozilla-thunderbird – 

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.

Get Ubuntu Pro

References

Have additional questions?

Talk to a member of the team ›