Vulnerability Note VU#130923

Mozilla Firefox command line URI handling vulnerability

Overview

Mozilla Firefox contains a vulnerability that may allow an attacker to bypass security restrictions by opening specially crafted URIs using the Firefox command line interface.

I. Description

Mozilla Firefox can process URIs from its command line interface that can be accessed by users or programs. Passing Firefox multiple URIs through the command line interface using the pipe symbol will launch Firefox with the URIs opened in tabs. An attacker could use this feature pass URIs to Firefox that should be handled by another application. Since Firefox may determine that the URI sent to it is from a local content source, domain and origin-based security restrictions that usually apply to remote content may be bypassed.

II. Impact

A remote attacker may be able to use this vulnerability to bypass security restrictions, or to aid in the exploitation of other vulnerabilities.

III. Solution

Upgrade

Per Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2008-35 this issue has been addressed in Firefox 3.0.1 and Firefox 2.0.0.16.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Updated
Mozilla	Vulnerable	16-Jul-2008

References

http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2008/mfsa2008-35.html
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=441120

Credit

Thanks to Mozilla for information that was used in this report. Mozilla credits Billy Rios for reporting this issue and Ben Turner and Dan Veditz for discovering additional attack vectors.

This document was written by Ryan Giobbi.

Other Information

Date Public	07/16/2008
Date First Published	07/16/2008 11:39:06 AM
Date Last Updated	07/16/2008
CERT Advisory
CVE Name	CVE-2008-2933
Metric	0.00
Document Revision	8

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