The Mozilla Foundation releases Firefox 88, correcting 13 bugs ranging from substantial to reduced severity.
The Mozilla Foundation mounted a flaw in its Firefox browser that authorized spoofing of the HTTPS protected communications icon, exhibited as a padlock in the browser deal with window. Effective exploitation of the flaw could have allowed a rogue web site to intercept browser communications.
The patch was component of the non-profit’s Monday update to Firefox 88 and its corporate Firefox ESR 78.10 browser and its Thunderbird 78.10 email customer. In whole, Firefox 88 addresses 13 browser bugs, 6 of which are rated superior-severity.
Padlock Bug: Bogus Sense of Security
Tracked as CVE-2021-23998, the secure-lock-icon bug effects equally the buyer and company variations of Firefox browsers prior to the Monday releases. “Through challenging navigations with new windows, an HTTP web page could have inherited a secure lock icon from an HTTPS webpage,” wrote Mozilla in its security advisory.
Credited for exploring the spoofed protected lock icon is independent researcher Jordi Chancel, who on December 10, 2020 tweeted “I identified once more a new SSL Spoofing Issue (and other folks variohttps://www.mozilla.org/en-US/security/advisories/mfsa2021-16/#CVE-2021-23998us security issues previous 2 months)”. The vulnerability has a severity ranking of reasonable, Mozilla noted.
The browser padlock icon, applied by all major browsers, indicates a secure communication channel among the browser and the server hosting the site. It indicates the conversation is encrypted making use of HTTPS and makes use of an SSL/TLS certificate.
6 Large-Severity Bugs
Other bugs, rated superior-severity, are flaws ranging from memory corruption bugs to one that authorized a rogue web page to render a malicious JavaScript outside a webpage’s obvious information window.
“By employing 3D CSS in conjunction with Javascript, information could have been rendered outdoors the webpage’s viewport, resulting in a spoofing attack that could have been employed for phishing or other assaults on a user,” Mozilla wrote of the bug tracked as CVE-2021-23996.
Bug hunter Irvan Kurniawan is credited for unearthing two of the large-severity bugs and 1 reasonable flaw mounted in Firefox Monday. One particular is (CVE-2021-23995) is a bug explained as a “use-soon after-no cost in responsive structure mode”.
“When Responsive Style and design Method was enabled, it utilized references to objects that were formerly freed. We presume that with adequate exertion this could have been exploited to run arbitrary code,” wrote Mozilla. Responsive layout is a time period applied to describe how sites automatically adapt to distinctive sized screens
Kurniawan is also credited for obtaining a use-just after-free of charge bug (CVE-2021-23997) that can be triggered by the releasing of a web-centered font from the browser’s cache. This bug, like Kurniawan’s past vulnerability, could be employs by an adversary to concentrate on a certain browser and execute distant code.
“Due to unforeseen info variety conversions, a use-immediately after-free of charge could have transpired when interacting with the font cache. We presume that with enough hard work this could have been exploited to run arbitrary code,” Mozilla wrote.
The Mozilla security bulletin is gentle on the complex particulars of the bug and does not show if any of the 13 flaws outlined in its advisory are getting exploited in the wild. The rather delicate collection of Firefox fixes stand in contrast to Google and its Chrome browser, which previous 7 days rushed patches addressing a zero-working day distant code execution (RCE) vulnerability.
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