Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2016-23

Use-after-free in HTML5 string parser

Announced
March 8, 2016
Reporter
ca0nguyen
Impact
Critical
Products
Firefox, Firefox ESR, Thunderbird
Fixed in
  • Firefox 45
  • Firefox ESR 38.7
  • Thunderbird 38.7
  • Thunderbird 45

Description

Security researcher ca0nguyen, working with HP's Zero Day Initiative, reported a use-after-free issue in the HTML5 string parser when parsing a particular set of table-related tags in a foreign fragment context such as SVG. This results in a potentially exploitable crash.

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

References