Mozilla / Firefox Memory Exposure Vulnerability
JimmyM writes "Secunia has a story regarding a new severe vulnerability in the Mozilla Suite and Firefox browser, which can be exploited by any web site to read all memory, which the browser process has access to. No patch is available from Mozilla. A demonstration is available here."
Can a remote site actually get access to this information, or is it only displayable on the screen?
The data is being displayed within a TEXTAREA box, so it's probably as simple as adding an onClick="javascript:document.form.submit();" (or onMouseOver, etc.) to the document.
Yes, this is very dangerous.
From the bugzilla bug report (copy it, they disallow /. links):
Opened: 2005-04-01 13:40 PDT
Last modified: 2005-04-01 22:39 PDT
Resolution: FIXED
So yes they did, it was fixed in under 10 hours, and published 3 days later.
You can try the 1.0.3 release candidate, in which this bug is fixed, and which is due to be rolled out very soon. See here for download links.
Download the latest patched version right here: http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/latest-trunk/firefox-1.0+.en-US.win32.install er.exe
I just used it and I am not vulnerable: all I see are lot's of X's just like in IE.
"Is Mozilla actually more secure? Or is it just as bad as any other piece of software?"
It's a commonly held belief that Microsoft programmers come from Elbonia. Once it is accepted that Mozilla programmers are just as Elbonian as MS Programmers, the security zealousy will die down.
(Disclaimer 1: This post does not say that Mozilla is less secure (or more secure, for that matter) than IE. This post does not say that Mozilla programmers are incompetent. This post does address zealotry and nothing else.)
(Disclaimer 2: It really fucking pisses me off that I have to write this stupid disclaimer because lots of people with mod-points will not accept anything that's even remotely negative about Mozilla. Learn how to take criticism before dispensing it.)
"Derp de derp."