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FreeBSD: VID-C7B1AF20-F34F-11E8-9CDE-E0D55E2A8BF9 (CVE-2018-19516): messagelib -- HTML email can open browser window automatically

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FreeBSD: VID-C7B1AF20-F34F-11E8-9CDE-E0D55E2A8BF9 (CVE-2018-19516): messagelib -- HTML email can open browser window automatically

Severity
5
CVSS
(AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N)
Published
11/28/2018
Created
03/19/2019
Added
11/29/2018
Modified
03/20/2020

Description

Details for this vulnerability have not been published by NIST at this point. Descriptions from software vendor advisories for this issue are provided below.

From VID-C7B1AF20-F34F-11E8-9CDE-E0D55E2A8BF9:

Albert Astals Cid reports:

messagelib is the library used by KMail to display emails.

messagelib by default displays emails as plain text, but gives the user

an option to "Prefer HTML to plain text" in the settings and if that option

is not enabled there is way to enable HTML display when an email contains HTML.

Some HTML emails can trick messagelib into opening a new browser window when

displaying said email as HTML.

This happens even if the option to allow the HTML emails to access

remote servers is disabled in KMail settings.

This means that the owners of the servers referred in the email can see

in their access logs your IP address.

Solution(s)

  • freebsd-upgrade-package-messagelib

References

  • CVE-2018-19516

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