Description
If an attacker was able to perform a man-in-the-middle attack on an SMTP or POP3 server connection using STARTTLS, the attacker could inject server responses before the TLS handshake completed. Thunderbird would process these responses after the handshake, as if they had been received from the server over the encrypted connection. This could be used to make Thunderbird report a different outcome for sending or fetching mail, and to show attacker-controlled text in error messages. The encrypted connection itself was not compromised, and credentials were not exposed. Connections using SSL/TLS instead of STARTTLS were not affected. This vulnerability was fixed in Thunderbird 160 and Thunderbird 153.7.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected | Fixed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mozilla | Thunderbird | — | 153.7 |
Fixed in Linux distributions
Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.
Debian
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Debian 14 | thunderbird | No fix yet | — |
| Debian 13 | thunderbird | 1:153.7.0esr-1~deb13u1 | — |
| Debian 12 | thunderbird | No fix yet | — |
Ubuntu
Security tracker ↗| Release | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ubuntu 26.10 | thunderbird | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 26.04 LTS | thunderbird | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 24.04 LTS | thunderbird | No fix yet | — |
| Ubuntu 22.04 LTS | thunderbird | No fix yet | — |
Advisories 1
- WID-SEC-2026-4515 Mozilla Firefox und Thunderbird: Mehrere Schwachstellen BSI CERT-Bund (WID) · Nov 12, 2026