Vulnerability Note VU#289988

Apple Safari cross-domain HTTP redirection race condition

Overview

Apple Safari contains a race condition when handling HTTP redirection when updating pages. This can allow a cross-domain violation.

I. Description

Apple Safari contains a race condition when updating pages. When this race condition is used in combination with an HTTP redirection, Safari may allow JavaScript to modify content in another domain, which is a violation of the same-origin policy.

Note that this vulnerability is reported to only be in the Safari 3 beta, which is available for Mac OS X 10.4.9, Windows XP, and Vista.

II. Impact

By convincing a user to view a specially crafted HTML document (e.g., a web page, an HTML email message, or an email attachment), an attacker may be able to execute script or obtain full access to content in a different domain. The impact is similar to that of a cross-site scripting vulnerability. This includes the ability to spoof or modify web content, access website information such as cookies, or retrieve data from an encrypted HTTPS connection. For a more detailed description of the impact of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, please see CERT Advisory CA-2000-02.

III. Solution

Apply an update

This issue is addressed by Apple Safari Beta Update 3.0.2.

Disable JavaScript

This vulnerability can be mitigated in Safari by disabling JavaScript. Guidelines for setting preferences in Safari can be found in the "Securing Your Web Browser" document.

Systems Affected

Vendor	Status	Date Updated
Apple Computer, Inc.	Vulnerable	25-Jun-2007

References

http://www.cert.org/tech_tips/securing_browser/#Safari
http://www.apple.com/safari/download/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/components/same-origin.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61798

Credit

This vulnerability was reported by Apple, who in turn credit Lawrence Lai, Stan Switzer, and Ed Rowe of Adobe Systems, Inc.

This document was written by Will Dormann.

Other Information

Date Public
Date First Published	06/25/2007 10:35:01 AM
Date Last Updated	08/10/2007
CERT Advisory
CVE Name	CVE-2007-2400
Metric	0.47
Document Revision	7