New Firefox 3.0.6 fixes six security issues

Mozilla Corporation released a new version of their popular Firefox web browser. The new release fixes six security vulnerabilities.

MFSA 2009-06 Directives to not cache pages ignored

Paul Nel reported that certain HTTP directives to not cache web pages, Cache-Control: no-store and Cache-Control: no-cache for HTTPS pages, were being ignored by Firefox 3. On a shared system, applications relying upon these HTTP directives could potentially expose private data. Another user on the system could use this vulnerability to view improperly cached pages containing private data by navigating the browser back.

MFSA 2009-05 XMLHttpRequest allows reading HTTPOnly cookies

Developer and Mozilla community member Wladimir Palant reported that cookies marked HTTPOnly were readable by JavaScript via the XMLHttpRequest.getResponseHeader and XMLHttpRequest.getAllResponseHeaders APIs. This vulnerability bypasses the security mechanism provided by the HTTPOnly flag which intends to restrict JavaScript access to document.cookie.

MFSA 2009-04 Chrome privilege escalation via local .desktop files

Mozilla security researcher Georgi Guninski reported that the fix for an earlier vulnerability reported by Liu Die Yu using local internet shortcut files to access other sites (MFSA 2008-47) could be bypassed by redirecting to a privileged about: URI such as about:plugins. If an attacker could get a victim to download two files, a malicious HTML file and a .desktop shortcut file, they could have the HTML document load a privileged chrome document via the shortcut and both documents would be treated as same origin. This vulnerability could potentially be used by an attacker to inject arbitrary code into the chrome document and execute with chrome privileges.

MFSA 2009-03 Local file stealing with SessionStore

Mozilla security researcher moz_bug_r_a4 reported that a form input control’s type could be changed during the restoration of a closed tab. An attacker could set an input control’s text value to the path of a local file whose location was known to the attacker. If the tab was then closed and the victim persuaded to re-open it, upon restoring the tab the attacker could use this vulnerability to change the input type to file. Scripts in the page could then automatically submit the form and steal the contents of the user’s local file.

MFSA 2009-02 XSS using a chrome XBL method and window.eval

Mozilla security researcher moz_bug_r_a4 reported that a chrome XBL method can be used in conjuction with window.eval to execute arbitrary JavaScript within the context of another website, violating the same origin policy.

MFSA 2009-01 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.0.6)

Mozilla developers identified and fixed several stability bugs in the browser engine used in Firefox and other Mozilla-based products. Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code.