1. Ubuntu Security Notices
  2. USN-186-1

USN-186-1: Mozilla and Firefox vulnerabilities

Publication date

23 September 2005

Overview

Mozilla and Firefox vulnerabilities

Releases

Details

Peter Zelezny discovered that URLs which are passed to Firefox or
Mozilla on the command line are not correctly protected against
interpretation by the shell. If Firefox or Mozilla is configured as
the default handler for URLs (which is the default in Ubuntu), this
could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with user privileges by
tricking the user into clicking on a specially crafted URL (for
example, in an email or chat client). (CAN-2005-2968, MFSA-2005-59)

A buffer overflow was discovered in the XBM image handler. By tricking
an user into opening a specially crafted XBM image, an attacker could
exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
(MFSA-2005-58)

Mats Palmgren discovered a buffer overflow in the Unicode string
parser. Unicode strings that contained “zero-width non-joiner”
characters caused a browser crash, which could possibly even exploited
to execute arbitrary code with the user’s...

Peter Zelezny discovered that URLs which are passed to Firefox or
Mozilla on the command line are not correctly protected against
interpretation by the shell. If Firefox or Mozilla is configured as
the default handler for URLs (which is the default in Ubuntu), this
could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with user privileges by
tricking the user into clicking on a specially crafted URL (for
example, in an email or chat client). (CAN-2005-2968, MFSA-2005-59)

A buffer overflow was discovered in the XBM image handler. By tricking
an user into opening a specially crafted XBM image, an attacker could
exploit this to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
(MFSA-2005-58)

Mats Palmgren discovered a buffer overflow in the Unicode string
parser. Unicode strings that contained “zero-width non-joiner”
characters caused a browser crash, which could possibly even exploited
to execute arbitrary code with the user’s privileges.
(MFSA-2005-58)

Georgi Guninski reported an integer overflow in the JavaScript engine.
This could be exploited to run arbitrary code under some conditions.
(MFSA-2005-58)

This update also fixes some less critical issues which are described
at http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/mfsa2005-58.html.

Update instructions

In general, a standard system update will make all the necessary changes.

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu Release Package Version
5.04 hoary mozilla-mailnews – 
mozilla-calendar – 
mozilla-browser – 
mozilla-firefox – 
4.10 warty mozilla-mailnews – 
mozilla-calendar – 
mozilla-browser – 
mozilla-firefox – 

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References

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