Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2013-12

Buffer overflow in Javascript string concatenation

Announced
January 8, 2013
Reporter
pa_kt
Impact
Critical
Products
Firefox, Firefox ESR, SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, Thunderbird ESR
Fixed in
  • Firefox 18
  • Firefox ESR 10.0.12
  • Firefox ESR 17.0.2
  • SeaMonkey 2.15
  • Thunderbird 17.0.2
  • Thunderbird ESR 10.0.12
  • Thunderbird ESR 17.0.2

Description

Security researcher pa_kt reported a flaw via TippingPoint's Zero Day Initiative that an integer overflow is possible when calculating the length for a Javascript string concatenation, which is then used for memory allocation. This results in a buffer overflow, leading to a potentially exploitable memory corruption.

In general these flaws cannot be exploited through email in the Thunderbird and SeaMonkey products because scripting is disabled, but are potentially a risk in browser or browser-like contexts in those products.

References