Slashdot Mirror
Unpatched Firefox Flaw May Expose Users
Corrado writes "CNET is reporting on a new Firefox flaw." From the article: "The problem lies in the way Firefox handles Web links that are overly long and contain dashes, security researcher Tom Ferris said in an interview via instant messaging late Thursday. He posted an advisory and a proof of concept to the Full Disclosure security mailing list and to his Security Protocols Web site...The public bug disclosure comes just as Mozilla released the first beta of Firefox 1.5. The final release of the next Firefox update, which includes security enhancements, is due by year's end, according to the Firefox road map."
Did anyone else have a sudden concern that using Firefox would cause you to be "pants'ed"?
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
If you have gotten your non-techie friends to switch to Firefox, be sure to tell them about this problem and the possible fixes. Indeed, it is very important that Firefox be kept up to date on as many computers as possible, even if it means a short trip to install it for somebody. Nothing will hurt Firefox's reputation more than unpatched installations being exploited.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
That the posted exploit only causes Firefox to crash to stop responded (that is what it did to 1.5b1 on my Linux box). The person that found the exploit claims he has tweaked the code to actually run arbitrary code on the system, but I would like to se e proof of this since as of right now we only have a hanging browser.
Unstable Apps: Our Android Apps Don't Suck
I thought MS had a patent on unpatched browser flaws?!?!?
Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/
The bug depended on the host name being all ---
It will be hard to craft some exploit code using only the - character.
It may DOS and cause instability; as for those "but, open source should be proof against this" nay-sayers, I'm pretty certain from the advisory that this could only be properly discovered because the source was available.
hmmmm, maybe if you can trick users to click on bad links a few times it might cause heap corruption and crashing; maybe if you get them to download the right page a few times to pre-load the heap, and then a few ----- might cause the browser to execute from the heap,
A look at the soucre will show the consequences of this and show what sort of pathway there is to arbitrary code execution. I guess it could be exploitable...
Sam
blog.sam.liddicott.com
The security vulnerability is a buffer overflow flaw that "allows for an attacker to remotely execute arbitrary code" on a vulnerable PC,
Just for curiosity, can be Firefox compiled with the compiler parameter which adds code to detect a wide variety of such bugs? It's what Microsoft did at IE in the XP SP2; does it have "sense" to do the same for firefox?
"The final release of the next Firefox update, which includes security enhancements, is due by year's end, according to the Firefox road map."
We rightly criticize Microsoft for not responding to security concerns in a timely manner. I hope the Mozilla Foundation will be held to the same standard.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
would you rather find about about a bug and fix it:
A. before you release a version (Firefox);
or
B. years after you release a version (IE).
Well? Which is better? If you choose option B, you can deny there's a problem for 1-2 years, start working on a fix in 2-3 years, nay-say press rumors about the bug in 3-4 years, and fix it and release the bug fix in 4-5 years.
I choose option A.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I can see why some folks will publicize exploits if they feel the software maker isn't responding in a timely manner. But c'mon - he just reported this to the Mozilla folks on Sunday!
#DeleteChrome
Oh please, how is a heap overflow of 0x78787878787878... going to be exploitable. This looks like just a regular crash, if these turn you on just watch bugzilla for a few days, they turn up all the time.
A browser is a complex piece of software, of course there are going to be subtle bugs that turn up now and then. Nobody is perfect, and visualizing every possible execution path through a billion SLOC application is impossible. Please stop making a fuss about "OMG BROWSER DoS!!".
about:config -> network.enableIDN -> false
be happy!
This guy was driving and navigated to a bunch of yellow dashes in succession.
This method of action caused his car to crash.
I've only been able to replicate this bug on roads with > 2 cars.
Anyone experience this?
/waiting for roads v1.5
No need to bring up just this bug, why not compare history for the last year on both IE6 and Firefox 1.x?
o d=11o d=4227
According to Secunia, during 2005 IE6 has had 11 advisories while Firefox 1.x has had 18.
Unfortunately I can't get the links to work properly (graphs come up blank), so take a look at the URL's yourself:
IE6: http://secunia.com/graph/?type=adv&period=2005&pr
Firefox 1.x: http://secunia.com/graph/?type=adv&period=2005&pr
(you will have to copy and paste these URL's to make them work it seems)
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Indeed. The main update/fix for Internet Explorer-related problems is Firefox. So that should always be the first solution proposed. That in turn directly leads to my proposal: always keep your non-technical friends' Firefox installations up to date.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
You can download a fix here
Between 2005-09-03 and 2005-09-06, there were several bugs reported to Mozilla that are now marked hidden. Expect one of them to become visible now that this is announced. (note: bugzilla blocks slashdot referer, so cut&paste is needed, watch out for the extra space)
3 94 03 14 08 48 7
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3069
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3069
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3070
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3070
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3070
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3070
BTW, why is it necessary that so many bug reports be hidden? They can't all be valid security bugs, can they? Besides, full disclosure and an open development model go hand-in-hand.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
What about how 'critical' the bugs are rated or how long it takes for each to be fixed? Are the problems with ActiveX included?
Honestly, who cares? Why does this have to be compared to a Microsoft response? Why can't this just be viewed as an event in its own right and not constantly looked at as some insult which might be handing Microsoft an edge?
Objectively, if I use Firefox I have no interest in how Microsoft might have responded to a similar situation. I am purely interested in the Mozilla response (which I'm explicitly not passing judgement on in this post). Can people give it a rest with the constant defensiveness against Microsoft?
Cheers,
Ian
I mean I looked at the official disclosure from him (http://www.security-protocols.com/advisory/sp-x17 -advisory.txt)
and basically he acts like 4 days is all he needs to wait.. and apparently Mozilla isn't doing enough for this?
Mozilla isn't Microsoft or Cisco in two catagories.
A. They arn't ultra large coporatitions that can fix stuff in an instant.
B. They don't ignore problems, especially like this. They're likely working as fast as they can and they are willing to admit fuckups, but they want to have a fix for the fuck up first.
We don't need everyone running around thinking that EVERY company conducts business the same way that Cisco does... How all of them are part of a conspiracy. Firefox is getting known in the industry to be basically good at avoiding problems other browsers have and fixing major bugs.
By having a guy run around like this only 4 days (notice the dates in that link) it can only cause a higher likelyhood that someone will use that find maliciously and Firefox will get blamed for it when it's really the disclosure that's the problem.
The fact is those of us who find these bugs need to give the company time to react, we don't need to act like they don't care. 4 days is hardly enough unless he got back a letter that said screw you, which it doesn't sound like he did. Giving Full Disclosure the first time you hear about a problem, just creates a bigger problem because now more people will learn of the problem.
And there's a definate difference between waiting a couple monthes like the Cisco incident where the company was being forced into an uncomfortable positions and waiting less then a full week with apparently no provacation.
Take 2 seconds to check out his proof of concept:
t ml
http://www.security-protocols.com/firefox-death.h
WARNING: Clicking the above link will crash firefox. It will do nothing else. The hyphens are not normal minus hyphen (the - symbol on your american keyboard will translate to 0x2d) but a soft hyphen (0xad).
Actually, you might be able to, most people don't know of the Greasemonkey-ish add-on to IE called "Trixie", with many of the same scripts running unmodified between the two plugins.
A better argument is that "In firefox, the bugs are trivial enough to be fixed with a script until it gets fixed in the main program, a matter of weeks, instead of fixing it in a script in IE, and waiting years for it do get fixed."
Telling them its insecure only encourages them to stick with IE. All the studies are showing this with clueless uers since Microsoft does not like to boast about holes in IE.
http://saveie6.com/
Here's an xxd dump of the offending HTML:
For those testing on their own, *please realize* that it is not simply a dash (0x2D), but the character 0xAD.
Well, after five security updates that patch numerous security holes (22 since 2004), I'm not sure that Firefox is the solution. It's certainly more secure than IE, but is it secure *enough*? No, it isn't.
I deployed Firefox on the corporate network to improve security. Five updates later, I'm explaining to my manager that Firefox, just like IE, is full of security holes that need to be patched.
Unlike IE, Firefox can't be updated through Windows Update and it doesn't have a patch release cycle. That makes it harder to plan for and harder to deploy Firefox patches.
Having "fewer" vulnerabilities than IE isn't good enough - particularly when your patching system sucks. Open source can do better.
What about this:
0 extremely critical of 22 vulnerabilities and 4 still unpatched for Firefox
versus
10 extremely critical of 69 vulnerabilities and 19 still unpatched for IE 6.
I'm not saying Firefox doesn't have its issues, but be careful with statistics.
The bug report is now open and you can see that he reported it to Mozilla on the afternoon of the 6th. There was quite a bit of activity from top Mozilla developers and then the reporter posted the exploit publicly on the 8th.
We've determined that disabling IDN is a safe workaround and are working on supplying a small download that will take care of that configuration for the user.
- A