FreeBSD VuXML: Documenting security issues in FreeBSD and the FreeBSD Ports Collection

messagelib -- HTML email can open browser window automatically

Affected packages
messagelib < 18.08.3_2

Details

VuXML ID c7b1af20-f34f-11e8-9cde-e0d55e2a8bf9
Discovery 2018-11-28
Entry 2018-11-28

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.

References

CVE Name CVE-2018-19516
URL https://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20181128-1.txt