It was discovered that the same-origin check in Thunderbird could be bypassed. If a user had JavaScript enabled and were tricked into opening a malicious website, an attacker may be able to execute JavaScript in the context of a different website. (CVE-2008-3835)
Several problems were discovered in the browser engine of Thunderbird. If a user had JavaScript enabled, this could allow an attacker to execute code with chrome privileges. (CVE-2008-4058, CVE-2008-4059, CVE-2008-4060)
26 September 2008
A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:
It was discovered that the same-origin check in Thunderbird could be bypassed. If a user had JavaScript enabled and were tricked into opening a malicious website, an attacker may be able to execute JavaScript in the context of a different website. (CVE-2008-3835)
Several problems were discovered in the browser engine of Thunderbird. If a user had JavaScript enabled, this could allow an attacker to execute code with chrome privileges. (CVE-2008-4058, CVE-2008-4059, CVE-2008-4060)
Drew Yao, David Maciejak and other Mozilla developers found several problems in the browser engine of Thunderbird. If a user had JavaScript enabled and were 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-2008-4061, CVE-2008-4062, CVE-2008-4063, CVE-2008-4064)
Dave Reed discovered a flaw in the JavaScript parsing code when processing certain BOM characters. An attacker could exploit this to bypass script filters and perform cross-site scripting attacks if a user had JavaScript enabled. (CVE-2008-4065)
Gareth Heyes discovered a flaw in the HTML parser of Thunderbird. If a user had JavaScript enabled and were tricked into opening a malicious web page, an attacker could bypass script filtering and perform cross-site scripting attacks. (CVE-2008-4066)
Boris Zbarsky and Georgi Guninski independently discovered flaws in the resource: protocol. An attacker could exploit this to perform directory traversal, read information about the system, and prompt the user to save information in a file. (CVE-2008-4067, CVE-2008-4068)
Georgi Guninski discovered that Thunderbird improperly handled cancelled newsgroup messages. If a user opened a crafted newsgroup message, an attacker could cause a buffer overrun and potentially execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user invoking the program. (CVE-2008-4070)
The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:
To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.
After a standard system upgrade you need to restart Thunderbird to effect the necessary changes.