Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2009-32

Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2009-32

Title: JavaScript chrome privilege escalation
Impact: Critical
Announced: June 11, 2009
Reporter: moz_bug_r_a4
Products: Firefox, SeaMonkey

Fixed in: Firefox 3.0.11
SeaMonkey 1.1.17
Thunderbird 2.0.0.22
Description

Mozilla security researcher moz_bug_r_a4 reported a vulnerability which allows scripts from page content to run with elevated privileges. Using this vulnerability, an attacker could cause a chrome privileged object, such as the browser sidebar or the FeedWriter, to interact with web content in such a way that attacker controlled code may be executed with the object's chrome privileges.

Thunderbird supports neither the sidebar nor BrowserFeedWriter objects and is not vulnerable in its default configuration. Thunderbird might be vulnerable if the user has installed any add-on which adds a similarly implemented feature and then enables JavaScript in mail messages. This is not the default setting and we strongly discourage users from running JavaScript in mail.
Workaround

Disable JavaScript until a version containing this fix can be installed.
References

* https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=479560
* CVE-2009-1841