If a Thunderbird user quoted from an HTML email, for example by replying to the email, and the email contained either a VIDEO tag with the POSTER attribute or an OBJECT tag with a DATA attribute, a network request to the referenced remote URL was performed, regardless of a configuration to block remote content. An image loaded from the POSTER attribute was shown in the composer window. These issues could have given an attacker additional capabilities when targetting releases that did not yet have a fix for CVE-2022-3033 which was reported around three months ago. This vulnerability affects Thunderbird < 102.5.1.

If a Thunderbird user replied to a crafted HTML email containing a <code>meta</code> tag, with the <code>meta</code> tag having the <code>http-equiv="refresh"</code> attribute, and the content attribute specifying an URL, then Thunderbird started a network request to that URL, regardless of the configuration to block remote content. In combination with certain other HTML elements and attributes in the email, it was possible to execute JavaScript code included in the message in the context of the message compose document. The JavaScript code was able to perform actions including, but probably not limited to, read and modify the contents of the message compose document, including the quoted original message, which could potentially contain the decrypted plaintext of encrypted data in the crafted email. The contents could then be transmitted to the network, either to the URL specified in the META refresh tag, or to a different URL, as the JavaScript code could modify the URL specified in…