Ubuntu Security Notice USN-690-1

17th December, 2008

firefox-3.0, xulrunner-1.9 vulnerabilities

A security issue affects these releases of Ubuntu and its derivatives:

• Ubuntu 8.10
• Ubuntu 8.04 LTS

Software description

• firefox-3.0
• xulrunner-1.9

Details

Several flaws were discovered in the browser engine. These problems could allow
an attacker to crash the browser and possibly execute arbitrary code with user
privileges. (CVE-2008-5500, CVE-2008-5501, CVE-2008-5502)

It was discovered that Firefox did not properly handle persistent cookie data.
If a user were tricked into opening a malicious website, an attacker could
write persistent data in the user's browser and track the user across browsing
sessions. (CVE-2008-5505)

Marius Schilder discovered that Firefox did not properly handle redirects to
an outside domain when an XMLHttpRequest was made to a same-origin resource.
It's possible that sensitive information could be revealed in the
XMLHttpRequest response. (CVE-2008-5506)

Chris Evans discovered that Firefox did not properly protect a user's data when
accessing a same-domain Javascript URL that is redirected to an unparsable
Javascript off-site resource. If a user were tricked into opening a malicious
website, an attacker may be able to steal a limited amount of private data.
(CVE-2008-5507)

Chip Salzenberg, Justin Schuh, Tom Cross, and Peter William discovered Firefox
did not properly parse URLs when processing certain control characters.
(CVE-2008-5508)

Kojima Hajime discovered that Firefox did not properly handle an escaped null
character. An attacker may be able to exploit this flaw to bypass script
sanitization. (CVE-2008-5510)

Several flaws were discovered in the Javascript engine. If a user were tricked
into opening a malicious website, an attacker could exploit this to execute
arbitrary Javascript code within the context of another website or with chrome
privileges. (CVE-2008-5511, CVE-2008-5512)

Flaws were discovered in the session-restore feature of Firefox. If a user were
tricked into opening a malicious website, an attacker could exploit this to
perform cross-site scripting attacks or execute arbitrary Javascript code with
chrome privileges. (CVE-2008-5513)

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 8.10:

firefox-3.0 3.0.5+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.10.1

abrowser 3.0.5+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.10.1

xulrunner-1.9 1.9.0.5+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.10.1

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS:

firefox-3.0 3.0.5+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1

xulrunner-1.9 1.9.0.5+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.8.04.1

To update your system, please follow these instructions: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Security/Upgrades.

After a standard system upgrade you need to restart Firefox and any
applications that use xulrunner, such as Epiphany, to effect the necessary
changes.

References

CVE-2008-5500, CVE-2008-5501, CVE-2008-5502, CVE-2008-5505, CVE-2008-5506, CVE-2008-5507, CVE-2008-5508, CVE-2008-5510, CVE-2008-5511, CVE-2008-5512, CVE-2008-5513