Vulnerability Note VU#736934

Mozilla products vulnerable to memory corruption via a particular sequence of HTML tags

Original Release date: 17 Apr 2006 | Last revised: 17 Apr 2006

Overview

A vulnerability in the way Mozilla products and derivative programs handle certain HTML tags could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on a vulnerable system.

Description

A vulnerability has been discovered in the way that Mozilla and derived programs handle certain HTML tags. Mozilla Foundation Secuity Advisory 2006-18 states the following:

    A particular sequence of HTML tags that reliably crash Mozilla clients was reported by an anonymous researcher via TippingPoint and the Zero Day Initiative. The crash is due to memory corruption that can be exploited to run arbitrary code.

    Mozilla mail clients will crash on the tag sequence, but without the ability to run scripts to fill memory with the attack code it may not be possible for an attacker to exploit this crash.

Impact

A remote attacker may be able to crash a vulnerable program or run code of their choosing on an affected system. The attacker-supplied code would be executed with the permissions of the user running the vulnerable program.

Solution

Upgrade

The Mozilla Foundation has published Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2006-18 in response to this issue. Users are encouraged to review this advisory and upgrade to the fixed versions of the products it describes.

Systems Affected (Learn More)

VendorStatusDate NotifiedDate Updated
Mozilla, Inc.Affected17 Apr 200617 Apr 2006
Red Hat, Inc.Affected-17 Apr 2006
If you are a vendor and your product is affected, let us know.

CVSS Metrics (Learn More)

Group Score Vector
Base N/A N/A
Temporal N/A N/A
Environmental N/A N/A

References

Credit

Thanks to Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory for reporting this vulnerability. The Mozilla Foundation, in turn, credits an anonymous researcher via TippingPoint and the Zero Day Initiative

This document was written by Chad Dougherty based on information supplied by the Mozilla Foundation.

Other Information

  • CVE IDs: CVE-2006-0749
  • Date Public: 13 Apr 2006
  • Date First Published: 17 Apr 2006
  • Date Last Updated: 17 Apr 2006
  • Severity Metric: 16.20
  • Document Revision: 5

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