Mozilla Thunderbird < 68.12

high Nessus Plugin ID 139870

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Synopsis

A mail client installed on the remote Windows host is affected by multiple vulnerabilities.

Description

The version of Thunderbird installed on the remote Windows host is prior to 68.12. It is, therefore, affected by multiple vulnerabilities as referenced in the mfsa2020-40 advisory.

- When aborting an operation, such as a fetch, an abort signal may be deleted while alerting the objects to be notified. This results in a use-after-free and we presume that with enough effort it could have been exploited to run arbitrary code. (CVE-2020-15669)

- If Thunderbird is installed to a user-writable directory, the Mozilla Maintenance Service would execute updater.exe from the install location with system privileges. Although the Mozilla Maintenance Service does ensure that updater.exe is signed by Mozilla, the version could have been rolled back to a previous version which would have allowed exploitation of an older bug and arbitrary code execution with System Privileges. Note: This issue only affected Windows operating systems. Other operating systems are unaffected. (CVE-2020-15663)

- By holding a reference to the <code>eval()</code> function from an about:blank window, a malicious webpage could have gained access to the InstallTrigger object which would allow them to prompt the user to install an extension. Combined with user confusion, this could result in an unintended or malicious extension being installed. (CVE-2020-15664)

Note that Nessus has not tested for these issues but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Upgrade to Mozilla Thunderbird version 68.12 or later.

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 139870

File Name: mozilla_thunderbird_68_12.nasl

Version: 1.5

Type: local

Agent: windows

Family: Windows

Published: 8/26/2020

Updated: 11/18/2025

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment Agent, Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Nessus Agent, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.7

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 9.3

Temporal Score: 6.9

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2020-15663

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.8

Temporal Score: 7.7

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2020-15669

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/a:mozilla:thunderbird

Required KB Items: installed_sw/Mozilla Thunderbird

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 8/25/2020

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/25/2020

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2020-15663, CVE-2020-15664, CVE-2020-15669

MFSA: 2020-40

Detections

Analytics