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.
Published: 2026-11-10
Score: n/a
EPSS: n/a
KEV: No
Impact: n/a
Action: n/a
AI Analysis

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Remediation

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History

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 20:30:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
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. 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.
References

Tue, 10 Nov 2026 19:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
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.
Title SMTP and POP3 response injection when using STARTTLS
References

Subscriptions

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: mozilla

Published:

Updated: 2026-11-10T20:24:07.977Z

Reserved: 2026-11-10T18:59:56.332Z

Link: CVE-2026-126135

cve-icon Vulnrichment

No data.

cve-icon NVD

Status : Received

Published: 2026-11-10T19:21:14.203

Modified: 2026-11-10T19:21:14.203

Link: CVE-2026-126135

cve-icon Redhat

No data.

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses

No weakness.