Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2014-43

Cross-site scripting (XSS) using history navigations

Announced
April 29, 2014
Reporter
moz_bug_r_a4
Impact
High
Products
Firefox, Firefox ESR, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird
Fixed in
  • Firefox 29
  • Firefox ESR 24.5
  • SeaMonkey 2.26
  • Thunderbird 24.5

Description

Mozilla security researcher moz_bug_r_a4 reported a method to use browser navigations through history to load a website with that page's baseURI property pointing to that of another site instead of the seemingly loaded one. The user will continue to see the incorrect site in the addressbar of the browser. This allows for a cross-site scripting (XSS) attack or the theft of data through a phishing attack.

In general this flaw cannot be exploited through email in the Thunderbird and Seamonkey products because scripting is disabled, but is potentially a risk in browser or browser-like contexts.

References