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Bitdefender detects a vulnerability exploit in thunderbird.exe

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  • Last reply by Solarius

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Hello everyone !

I've used Thunderbird for a few months by now, and all worked well. However, approximately a week ago, Bitdefender suddenly started to prevent Thunderbird from starting, warning me that it had detected a vulnerability exploit in thunderbird.exe.

I tried to de-install and re-install Thunderbird, on my data (D:/) disk and on my system (C:/) disk, but it didn't help... Is it possible that the vulnerability is in a config file that isn't deleted when uninstalling Thunderbird?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Hello everyone ! I've used Thunderbird for a few months by now, and all worked well. However, approximately a week ago, Bitdefender suddenly started to prevent Thunderbird from starting, warning me that it had detected a vulnerability exploit in thunderbird.exe. I tried to de-install and re-install Thunderbird, on my data (D:/) disk and on my system (C:/) disk, but it didn't help... Is it possible that the vulnerability is in a config file that isn't deleted when uninstalling Thunderbird? Thank you in advance for your help!
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Chosen solution

As long as you downloaded Thunderbird from https://www.thunderbird.net/ and not from a questionable source, it's very likely that Bitdefender is reporting a false positive. You can try to upload the thunderbird.exe file to VirusTotal, and see what happens. https://www.virustotal.com/

Beyond that, it's recommended to exclude the Thunderbird profile folder from being scanned by the anti-virus real-time scanner, to avoid mail file corruption.

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Chosen Solution

As long as you downloaded Thunderbird from https://www.thunderbird.net/ and not from a questionable source, it's very likely that Bitdefender is reporting a false positive. You can try to upload the thunderbird.exe file to VirusTotal, and see what happens. https://www.virustotal.com/

Beyond that, it's recommended to exclude the Thunderbird profile folder from being scanned by the anti-virus real-time scanner, to avoid mail file corruption.

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Hm... Virustotal doesn't detect anything, so I guess it's safe...

I think I'll whitelist the executable, but I'll remain ultra careful with my emails.