7.5 - USN-124-1

A security issue affects the following Ubuntu releases:

Ubuntu 5.04 (Hoary Hedgehog)

The following packages are affected:

mozilla-browser mozilla-firefox

The problem can be corrected by upgrading the affected package to version 1.0.2-0ubuntu5.1 (mozilla-firefox) and 2:1.7.6-1ubuntu2.1 (mozilla-browser). After a standard system upgrade you need to restart your browser to effect the necessary changes.

Please note that Ubuntu 5.04 (Warty Warthog) is also affected; this release will be fixed soon in a separate advisory.

Details follow:

When a popup is blocked the user is given the ability to open that popup through the popup-blocking status bar icon and, in Firefox, through the information bar. Doron Rosenberg noticed that popups which are permitted by the user were executed with elevated privileges, which could be abused to automatically install and execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user. (CAN-2005-1153)

It was discovered that the browser did not start with a clean global JavaScript state for each new website. This allowed a malicious web page to define a global variable known to be used by a different site, allowing malicious code to be executed in the context of that site (for example, sending web mail or automatic purchasing). (CAN-2005-1154)

Michael Krax discovered a flaw in the "favicon" links handler. A malicious web page could define a favicon link tag as JavaScript, which could be exploited to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user. (CAN-2005-1155)

Michael Krax found two flaws in the Search Plugin installation. This allowed malicious plugins to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current site. If the current page had elevated privileges (like "about:plugins" or "about:config"), the malicious plugin could even install malicious software when a search was performed. (CAN-2005-1156, CAN-2005-1157)

Kohei Yoshino discovered two missing security checks when Firefox opens links in its sidebar. This allowed a malicious web page to construct a link that, when clicked on, could execute arbitrary JavaScript code with the privileges of the user. (CAN-2005-1158)

Georgi Guninski discovered that the types of certain XPInstall related JavaScript objects were not sufficiently validated when they were called. This could be exploited by a malicious website to crash Firefox or even execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user. (CAN-2005-1159)

Firefox did not properly verify the values of XML DOM nodes of web pages. By tricking the user to perform a common action like clicking on a link or opening the context menu, a malicious page could exploit this to execute arbitrary JavaScript code with the full privileges of the user. (CAN-2005-1160)