TippingPoint Zero Day Initiative
 

Mozilla Firefox XUL _moveToEdgeShift() Memory Corruption Vulnerability

ZDI-09-015: March 30th, 2009

CVE ID

Affected Vendors

Affected Products

TippingPoint™ IPS Customer Protection

TippingPoint IPS customers are protected against this vulnerability by Digital Vaccine protection filter ID 6947. For further product information on the TippingPoint IPS:

Vulnerability Details

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code on vulnerable installations of Mozilla Firefox. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page.

The specific flaw exists in the XUL tree method _moveToEdgeShift(). In some cases this call will trigger garbage collection routines on in use objects which will result in a future call to a dangling pointer. This can be leveraged to execute arbitrary code under the context of the current user.

Vendor Response

Mozilla Firefox has issued an update to correct this vulnerability. More details can be found at:

Disclosure Timeline

    2009-03-19 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
    2009-03-30 - Coordinated public release of advisory

Credit

This vulnerability was discovered by:
    Nils