Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2008-47

Information stealing via local shortcut files

Announced
November 12, 2008
Reporter
Liu Die Yu
Impact
Moderate
Products
Firefox, SeaMonkey
Fixed in
  • Firefox 2.0.0.18
  • Firefox 3.0.4
  • SeaMonkey 1.1.13

Description

Security researcher Liu Die Yu of TopsecTianRongXin reported that locally saved .url shortcut files could be used to read information stored in the local cache. An attacker could use this vulnerability to steal information from a victim's browser cache if they were able to get the victim to download two separate files, a .url shortcut and a HTML file. Given the relative complexity of this attack, the severity of the issue was determined to be moderate.

Workaround

Disable JavaScript until a version containing these fixes can be installed.

References