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Vulnerability In Firefox Popup Blocker

Posted by kdawson on from the all-your-files dept.

cj writes in with news of a vulnerability in Firefox's stock popup blocker discovered by Michal Zalewski. The vulnerability can allow a malicious user to read files from an affected system. The attacker would "need to plant a predictably named file with exploit code on the target system. This sounds hard, but isn't," according to the article.

13 of 100 comments (clear)

  1. Anyone knows if the 2.x tree is vulnerable too? by A+beautiful+mind · · Score: 5, Informative
    From TFA:

    Vulnerable Systems:
    * Firefox version 1.5.0.9
    Can anyone test?
    --
    It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
    Be yourself no matter what they say
    1. Re:Anyone knows if the 2.x tree is vulnerable too? by Richard_at_work · · Score: 2, Informative

      Im using 1.5.0.9 at the moment, no 2.0 upgrade was ever pushed out to me, and checking now manually shows no updates waiting.

    2. Re:Anyone knows if the 2.x tree is vulnerable too? by CRCulver · · Score: 2, Informative

      Did you download Firefox directly from its website? It may be that your distro turned off auto-update in packaging Firefox.

    3. Re:Anyone knows if the 2.x tree is vulnerable too? by linuxci · · Score: 2, Informative

      Firefox 2 is still an optional upgrade so is not pushed through auto-update, the 1.5 series is still supported. Once 1.5 gets closer to end of life then 2.0 will be offered.

    4. Re:Anyone knows if the 2.x tree is vulnerable too? by rainman_bc · · Score: 3, Informative

      Is anyone still running 1.5.0? I thought the auto upgrade had handled that months ago.

      Fedora has no plans to officially release a 2.0 for FC6:

      http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox2

      "Fedora users will be to stay with Firefox 1.5 and wait for the Firefox 3.0 update"

      That's left me a bit annoyed personally... I like the changes to FF2...

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    5. Re:Anyone knows if the 2.x tree is vulnerable too? by hal9000(jr) · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yep, on windows. I moved to FF2.0 when it came out, got hosed by java handling and other stuff, and jumped back to 1.5. I will wait a bit longer before I make the leap again.

    6. Re:Anyone knows if the 2.x tree is vulnerable too? by donaldm · · Score: 2, Informative

      When I put FC6 on my 64 bit dual core AMD laptop it came standard with Firefox 1.5 while OpenSUSE (put this on my son's PC) came with Firefox 2. To upgrade to version 2 was fairly easy since all I had to do was download the rpm then remove version 1.5 then install the rpm. Firefox 2 seems to work well and I can even install global or personal plug-ins. I have a 64 bit processor and most of my apps are 64 bits (including Firefox) have to use nspluginwrapper to add 32 bit plug-ins because some vendors (cough Flash) have not got a 64 bit addition, however once "wrapped" it works.

      I am not sure if Firefox 2 is vulnerable since I have not seen any alerts.

      --
      There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
  2. Re:Is this the best they can do? by ewl1217 · · Score: 2, Informative

    This only affects the 1.5.x branch, not the current 2.x stuff...

  3. Right... by CasperIV · · Score: 4, Informative

    That was quite possibly the most ignorant statement I have read on slashdot recently. I'm not particularly partial to either Firefox or IE, but exploit for exploit, your statement has no merit. What will be the deciding factor will be how fast it is patched.

  4. Windows only? by jimbobborg · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the fine article:

    "When the user chooses to manually allow a blocked popup however, normal URL permission checks are bypassed. "

    So you have to MANUALLY disable the popup blocker on a site you don't know in order to make this work. Also, the article keeps talking about c:\whatever. It does not indicate if this is a vulnerability in a non-Windows system.

    1. Re:Windows only? by Tony+Hoyle · · Score: 5, Informative

      From the text it's hardcoded to a specific installation of Windows (not even the default config). It wouldn't work on most systems.

  5. Fixed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Already fixed: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=36942 7

  6. Only 6% of my visitors are using 1.5x. by JAB+Creations · · Score: 2, Informative

    Only 6% of my users so far this year are using Firefox 1.5x compared to 68% using Firefox 2.0. There are still about 4% of users who are using IE 6 without service pack 2 on XP (or are using IE6 on older versions of Windows). Point: it's a vulnerability that hackers won't bother to exploit and Mozilla will probably patch quickly anyway.

    --
    - John
    http://www.jabcreations.com/