Re: CVE request: claws-mail vcalendar plugin stores user/password in cleartext

[Paul <paul () claws-mail org>]

On Mon, 10 Mar 2014 14:31:34 -0600
"Vincent Danen" <vdanen () redhat com> wrote: 

> Subject pretty much says it all.  It's not a very exciting flaw but
> was brought to our attention.
>
> References:
>
> http://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=3099
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1074683

I believe that a CVE request for this is probably overkill.

The vCalendar plugin does not support login credentials when
subscribing to a WebCal.

The user can work around this missing feature by adding their username
and password to the URI, e.g.
https://USERNAME:MYPASSWORD@mailserver/home/USERNAME/Calendar

The URI is stored in clear text, hence if the user chooses to work
around the missing feature their un/pw will be stored in clear text.

Similar behaviour can be witnessed in a number of other apps. For
example, if I bookmark
https://USERNAME:MYPASSWORD@mailserver/home/USERNAME/Calendar in
firefox, it will save the credentials in clear text.

There are some apps that will store what the user enters in a
password field as clear text, however Claws Mail is not one of them.

Therefore, on the Claws Mail bug tracker, this is marked as a feature
request and not as a security issue.

with regards

Paul

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