Mozilla’s FireFox Full Of Lead: Secunia Says Holes Exist

By John Stith
Staff Writer
Article Date: 2005-05-09

Internet security firm Secunia found holes in internet browser Firefox from the Mozilla company. The problems present two of the first big security problems for the browser that continues to grow in popularity.

Secunia's advisory said this:

1) The problem is that "IFRAME" JavaScript URLs are not properly protected from being executed in context of another URL in the history list. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary HTML and script code in a user's browser session in context of an arbitrary site.

2) Input passed to the "IconURL" parameter in "InstallTrigger.install()" is not properly verified before being used. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary JavaScript code with escalated privileges via a specially crafted JavaScript URL.

Mozilla has acknowledged these problems and has promised to work on them around the clock. 1) Disable JavaScript.

2) Disable software installation: Options --> Web Features --> "Allow web sites to install software"

Secunia's said a temporary solution has been added to the sites "update.mozilla.org" and "addons.mozilla.org" where requests are redirected to "do-not-add.mozilla.org". This will stop the publicly available exploit code using a combination of vulnerability 1 and 2 to execute arbitrary code in the default settings of Firefox.

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About the Author:
John Stith is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

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