cbcvebase.
CVE-2019-11705
published 2019-07-23

CVE-2019-11705: A flaw in Thunderbird's implementation of iCal causes a stack buffer overflow in icalrecur_add_bydayrules when processing certain email messages, resulting in…

PriorityP261critical9.8CVSS 3.1
AVNACLPRNUINSUCHIHAH
EXPLOIT
EPSS
9.90%
95.0th percentile
A flaw in Thunderbird's implementation of iCal causes a stack buffer overflow in icalrecur_add_bydayrules when processing certain email messages, resulting in a potentially exploitable crash. This vulnerability affects Thunderbird < 60.7.1.

Affected

7 ranges
VendorProductVersion rangeFixed in
debianthunderbird< thunderbird 1:60.7.1-1 (bookworm)thunderbird 1:60.7.1-1 (bookworm)
mozillathunderbird< 60.7.160.7.1
mozillathunderbird>= 0 < 1:60.7.1-11:60.7.1-1
mozillathunderbird>= 0 < 1:60.7.1-11:60.7.1-1
mozillathunderbird>= 0 < 1:60.7.1-11:60.7.1-1
mozillathunderbird>= 0 < 1:60.7.1-11:60.7.1-1
mozillathunderbird>= unspecified < 60.7.160.7.1

Detection & IOCsextracted from sources · hover to see the quote

urlhttps://github.com/x41sec/advisories/tree/master/X41-2019-003
urlhttps://gitlab.com/exploit-database/exploitdb-bin-sploits/-/raw/main/bin-sploits/47004.zip
  • Trigger function is icalrecur_add_bydayrules() in icalrecur.c — monitor crashes or stack-smashing signals originating from this function when Thunderbird processes incoming email with iCal attachments.
  • The overflow occurs when the BYDAY rule's weekno field takes an invalid (e.g. negative) value, causing an out-of-bounds write to a stack-allocated short array — look for malformed RRULE:BYDAY components in iCal data within email messages.
  • Vulnerable Thunderbird versions are strictly below 60.7.1 — flag any Thunderbird process older than 60.7.1 processing iCal email as high-risk.
  • libical versions prior to the commit 5b99f67f6 (pre v2.0.0, 2015-09-04) lack the negative-weekno guard and are vulnerable — audit libical version in use alongside Thunderbird.
  • ·Setting calendar.icaljs = true in Thunderbird preferences switches iCal parsing from the vulnerable libical to the JavaScript implementation (icaljs), mitigating the vulnerability without patching.
  • ·Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 and 8 ship a libical version that already contains the negative-weekno fix and are listed as Not Affected; only RHEL 6 (out of support scope) required patching.

CVSS provenance

nvdv3.19.8CRITICALCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
nvdv2.07.5HIGHAV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
osv9.8CRITICAL
vendor_debian9.8CRITICAL
vendor_redhat9.8CRITICAL
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