Vulnerability Note VU#661651

Mozilla Thunderbird external-body MIME type buffer overflow

Overview

Mozilla Thunderbird contains a heap-based buffer overflow which may allow a remote, unauthenticated attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.

I. Description

Mozilla Thunderbird is an open source, cross-platform email and news client. Thunderbird uses Multipurpose Internet Message Extensions (MIME) which extends support in Thunderbird for multi-part message bodies, non-text attachments, and non-ASCII character sets. A vulnerability exists in the way Mozilla Thunderbird parses external-body MIME type in an electronic mail which may result in a heap-based buffer overflow. According to Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2008-12:

The vulnerability is caused by allocating a buffer that can be three bytes too small in certain cases when viewing an email message with an external MIME body.

II. Impact

A remote, unauthenticated attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code on a system running a vulnerable version of Mozilla Thunderbird.

III. Solution

Apply Update

Mozilla has has addressed this vulnerability in version 2.0.0.12. For further information regarding this vulnerability, Mozilla has published MFSA-2008-12.

Apply Workaround

As stated directly from MFSA-2008-12:

Users can prevent the vulnerable code from being triggered by setting the "mailnews.display.disallow_mime_handlers" property to any value greater than or equal to 3.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Updated
Mozilla	Vulnerable	6-Mar-2008

References

http://securitytracker.com/id?1019504
http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2008/mfsa2008-12.html
http://secunia.com/advisories/29133/

Credit

This vulnerability was reported to VeriSign iDefense by regenrecht.

This document was written by Joseph W. Pruszynski.

Other Information

Date Public	02/26/2008
Date First Published	03/06/2008 08:29:55 AM
Date Last Updated	03/06/2008
CERT Advisory
CVE Name	CVE-2008-0304
US-CERT Technical Alerts
Metric	31.00
Document Revision	23