Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2015-42

Windows can retain access to privileged content on navigation to unprivileged pages

Announced
March 31, 2015
Reporter
Bobby Holley
Impact
Moderate
Products
Firefox, Firefox OS, SeaMonkey
Fixed in
  • Firefox 37
  • Firefox OS 2.2
  • SeaMonkey 2.35

Description

Mozilla developer Bobby Holley reported that windows created to hold privileged UI content retained access to privileged internal methods if later navigated to unprivileged content. If a separate flaw was found that allowed for web content to reference these privileged windows, an attacker could use this reference to navigate them to their own content allowing for an escalation of privilege and arbitrary code execution. On its own, this flaw does not allow for privilege escalation by web content.

References