Critical JavaScript vulnerability in Firefox 3.5

Brandon Sterne

80

Issue

A bug discovered last week in Firefox 3.5′s Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript compiler was disclosed publicly yesterday. It is a critical vulnerability that can be used to execute malicious code.

Impact

The vulnerability can be exploited by an attacker who tricks a victim into viewing a malicious Web page containing the exploit code. The vulnerability can be mitigated by disabling the JIT in the JavaScript engine. To do so:

  1. Enter about:config in the browser’s location bar.
  2. Type jit in the Filter box at the top of the config editor.
  3. Double-click the line containing javascript.options.jit.content setting the value to false.

Note that disabling the JIT will result in decreased JavaScript performance and is only recommended as a temporary security measure.  Once users have been received the security update containing the fix for this issue, they should restore the JIT setting to true by:

  1. Enter about:config in the browser’s location bar.
  2. Type jit in the Filter box at the top of the config editor.
  3. Double-click the line containing javascript.options.jit.content setting the value to true.

Alternatively, users can disable the JIT by running Firefox in Safe Mode.  Windows users can do so by selecting Mozilla Firefox (Safe Mode) from the Mozilla Firefox folder.

Status

Mozilla developers are working on a fix for this issue and a Firefox security update will be sent out as soon as the fix is completed and tested.

Credit

Zbyte reported this issue to Mozilla and Lucas Kruijswijk helped reduce the exploit test case.

Update: This vulnerability has been fixed in Firefox 3.5.1, released Thursday, July 16, 2009

80 responses

  1. Hugo wrote on :

    Is 3.0.x code base vulnerable too? When was this vuln introduced? Thanks!

  2. Renato S. Yamane wrote on ::

    Hum…
    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=503970

  3. m0niker wrote on ::

    from the command line (batch file):

    firefox.bat
    for /f %%a in (‘dir /B “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\firefox\Profiles\*.default”‘) do xcopy /y user.js “%APPDATA%\Mozilla\firefox\Profiles\”%%a

    user.js
    //Firefox 3.5’s Just-in-time (JIT) JavaScript Vulnerability – 7.14.09
    user_pref(“javascript.options.jit.content”, false);

  4. this is my name wrote on :

    what is the bugnumber for this security problem on mozillas bugzilla? any more details?

    the mozilla wiki doesnt show anything :(

  5. anon wrote on :

    Wow, man… not even Internet Explorer gets critical exploits 2 days after release.

  6. Jess wrote on :

    If that option doesn’t appear in my about:config,, could it be because ubuntu already disabled it for me? The only “javascript.options” I have are “relimit”, “showInConsole”, and “strict”.

  7. Joe Bloggs wrote on :

    I’ve been googling all over and visiting the various firefox sites, mozillazine etc and not seen anything about this vulnerability.

    Why is this blog so well hidden? Its really reassuring to finally read that you guys are working to fix the problem. I only found this blog via incidents.org

  8. Asa Dotzler wrote on :

    @Hugo, no this is not a bug in Firefox 3.0. It only affects 3.5 which includes the new JIT features in its JS engine.

    @anon said “Wow, man… not even Internet Explorer gets critical exploits 2 days after release.”

    Actually, it’s not two days after release. It’s two weeks after the release. And yes, even Internet Explorer (and Safari and Chrome and Opera) have all had vulnerabilities disclosed days and weeks after their releases.

    @Jess, you’re probably still on Firefox 3.0.x which isn’t impacted.

    @Joe, this is Mozilla’s official security blog. It’s where these kinds of announcements happen. If you queried Google for mozilla and security, you’d see this as the third link.

  9. skierpage wrote on :

    Does Firefox trunk (3.6a1pre) have a fix for this bug yet?

    What about javascript.options.jit.chrome , which defaults to false? I’ve had that set to true to look for bugs.

  10. skierpage wrote on :

    Hugo, Firefox 3.0 doesn’t have the super-fast TraceMonkey “just in time” (“jit”) JavaScript engine, so I doubt this vulnerability applies.

    anon, Microsoft has suffered far more zero day vulnerabilities than Firefox.

  11. Daniel Veditz wrote on :

    @this is my name: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=503286

    @skierpage: yes, today’s 3.6 nightly has the fix for this bug. It was checked in yesterday, a few hours _before_ we learned of the milw0rm posting. This fix was going to be in the 3.5.x update we had scheduled for the end of July, but obviously now we have moved up the schedule for release.

  12. franz wrote on :

    NoScript is your friend. :)

  13. Andy wrote on :

    > not even Internet Explorer gets critical exploits 2 days after release.

    Are you kidding?

    Internet Explorer *always* has security holes.

    The security holes stay there for many months waiting to be fixed – here’s proof:
    http://secunia.com/advisories/product/12366/
    ^ Get the facts — Internet Explorer 7 Security Holes

    Mozilla patches Firefox security holes in about 1-2 days.

    I never, ever caught anything with Firefox. With Internet Explorer I’ve gotten over 5 malicious programs installed (in the first few years I’ve used it).

    Get real. Stop spreading your FUD.

  14. Slush wrote on :

    @franz: NoScript is not a friend. NoScript is a click-nagging nanny.

  15. AdrenalinMd wrote on :

    Intresting, there is not an update yet, the exploit was posted on 13/07/09 on milw0rm.

  16. jmdesp wrote on :

    When searching “security firefox” the top result is to the Known Vulnerabilities page that doesn’t yet have an entry for Firefox 3.5.
    So it should be added, and this vulnerability listed there.

  17. Tom wrote on :

    @5: No, IE doesn’t “get vulnerabilities” two days after the release, because only few people have access to the source code. Maybe you should have said “wow, Moz FF tries to provide patches a lot faster and easier than MS IE”

  18. bub wrote on :

    all large software projects have holes, including browsers. doesn’t matter which browser. some get fixed faster than others, but they all have flaws. just because you hear about an exploit and it’s fixed 2 days later doesn’t mean it hasn’t been exploited a long time before it was made public. if you believe otherwise, you’re part of the problem.

  19. Anka wrote on :

    I tried the example on milw0rm using “Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; sv-SE; rv:1.9.1) Gecko/20090624 Firefox/3.5″ but nothing happened. The error console is empty too. Does this only affect 32bit systems perhaps?

  20. John wrote on :

    Good thing Ubuntu 9.04 still has firefox 3.0.11 as default. But a link from mozilla main page for security news would be very welcome, nothing about this even in security center section, good thing I found out about this in a blog.

  21. paefrati wrote on :

    Will there be a fix for this any time soon:
    http://ha.ckers.org/weird/CSS-history.cgi

  22. Zirro wrote on ::

    @Slush NoScript is your friend if you’re prepared to do some extra clicks, and most people aren’t lazy enough to not do that ;)

  23. BKF wrote on :

    @Slush: I don’t know what you’re talking about. There are configuration options in NoScript to reduce its’ chattiness and it’s very easy to automatically configure it to whitelist any sites that you use on a regular basis.

    I’ve been running it for years and it’s just about the best Internet-oriented add-on I’ve ever run. Combined with adblock plus it reduces site load time on complex pages almost in half by blocking content and scripts that are loaded from third-party sources which I have no interest in running. I’m absolutely certain that unless one of the handful of sites I regularly used gets infected, that Noscript would do well to protect anyone using it from this.

    No security tool will ever be fire and forget, nor should they be. But Noscript can be made to only nag you under certain circumstances.

  24. Maarten wrote on :

    is this a vunerability on Linux, Mac and Windows ?

  25. Maarten wrote on :

    any OS or just Windows ?

  26. Britt wrote on ::

    I tried to correct the issue in my 3.5 and there was no javascript.options.jit even listed?

  27. glenn wrote on :

    Finally, a forum where there’s nobody saying “I have a Mac, so I’m immune”. THANK YOU GOD.

  28. nemo wrote on :

    https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=503286#c34

    If you check out the mozilla bug, you can see that they say that one reason for speed of the exploit was that a known mozilla bug, with appearance of being exploitable, was not hidden while being fixed.

    They even had nice testcases to work from.

  29. Luiz wrote on :

    @anon Isn’t it reassuring to know that this bug was unconvered that fast? Wasn’t Microsoft the one company who would release “undisclosed” patches intertwined in its usual security upgrades?

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=527

    http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/?p=316

    No wonder Internet Explorer has fewer bugs when compared to its competitors.

  30. Woody wrote on :

    @Slush: I’d rather have a click-nagging nanny as an option than a browser that has vulnerabilities that only get fixed on alternating Tuesdays *if* someone bothers to fix it this week. :P If you don’t like it, don’t install it. It’s kept lots of crap from infesting my system (and from flashing in my page margins), so I suggest it to others.

  31. hkpk wrote on :

    I tried the code, but nothing happened, Firefox 3.5 displays the full code (not only the desired text).
    Does this is affected by the SUN JAVA RTE (if is installed or not)?

  32. Fausty | torrentfreedom wrote on ::

    Another vote for NoScript. Yes, it’s a bit naggy. Yes, it’s well worth it to keep script-happy websites from loading down simple pages with dozens of poorly-written, insecure, memory-hog scripts.

  33. Spade wrote on :

    This really ought to be somewhere prominent on the main Firefox page. If I hadn’t already known that this critical vulnerability existed, I’d not have found this blog post. Not good, Mozilla, not good.

    @ glenn – So you’re more worried about sticking it to Mac users than having an OS that’s significantly more secure? You may want to re-examine your priorities. ;)

    @ BKF – The author of NoScript recently included code intended to disable parts of Adblock Plus. They’ve gotten their wrists slapped for it, but as a result NoScript is not to be trusted. I use the RequestPolicy extension instead to block unwanted third-party content, and it’s a lot easier to manage than NoScript’s zillions of unnecessary options.

  34. Cat wrote on :

    I read about this on the US-CERT website ysterday, US-CERT recommends disabling Javascript in the FF browser, which I have done (via tools > options > content >unchecked enable JavaScript). This option is not mentioned in your post here, can you please tell me if disabling JS as I have done is safe, or do I need to do the work-around as you’ve outlined here?

    Thanks.

  35. A wrote on :

    Good day,
    If you use sandboxie with firefox 3.5 without using this temporary solution you suggest would the exploit still get thru?

  36. Kevin wrote on :

    Is this supposed to do anything? I tried this page but nothing happened. (Obviously, I copied it into a text/html document first, and loaded that).

  37. mercohaulic wrote on :

    @ Cat – From what I have experienced, if you perform that step it will affect login to sites requiring login authentication such as Hotmail and others that you use. As such, it might not be feasible to use the option only having to enable it later to login to your preferred websites.

    On the other hand if you do not use the services, I guess your method is the most secure option. However, the method mentioned here is less strict but still secure I reckon.

  38. Daniel Veditz wrote on :

    @Cat: disabling JavaScript will prevent this exploit

    @A: the exploit would still crash Firefox but if sandboxie does its job hopefully that will protect your system. It may be possible for an exploit writer in the future to attach a payload that will avoid crashing the browser — if so it could spy on your browsing without any protection from sandboxie at least until you shut down the browser.

    @Kevin: are you using Firefox 3.5 or 3.0? It’s not expected to do anything in Firefox 3.0. It also won’t affect 3.5 if you’ve disabled the JIT, are running in “safe mode” (which disables the JIT), or have JavaScript turned off.

  39. Jim Davis wrote on :

    Yeah, why not just release a small patch via update to turn off the JIT setting, instead of requiring folks to ‘hear about it”.

    Bet less than 1/2 know this is even an issue as of Wed night.

  40. Daniel Veditz wrote on :

    No amount of notice in the technical press will reach even a fraction of Firefox users, those folks won’t be reached until we ship them a fix. Since we had the _right_ fix in hand (before the milw0rm posting) there’s no point shipping a stop-gap fix.

  41. Kevin wrote on :

    Here’s my UA: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.1.1pre) Gecko/20090709 Shiretoko/3.5.1pre

    Is this just a Windows thing? At any rate, I’ll probably upgrade to the latest from trunk tonight if it fixes this.

  42. DJ wrote on :

    Does the security issue with 3.5 affect MAC running 10.5?

  43. Cat wrote on :

    @ Mercohaulic and Daniel Veditz (38 & 39)

    Thanks heaps. I was pretty sure it would be safe, I just wanted to check since it was not mentioned here. (Just in case there was something fundamental about how all this works that I was going over my head).

    Mercohaulic I have certainly noticed that some functions just don’t work with JS disabled, it makes me appreciate how much JS is used on the net! If the patch looks like it will be a while away I’ll just have a go at implementing this JIT disable thing, otherwise the things I need JS for can happily wait.

  44. Daniel Veditz wrote on :

    @DJ, @Kevin: the underlying bug happens on all platforms. The proof-of-concept exploit posted to milw0rm contained a windows-only payload, but it wouldn’t be too hard for someone to graft on Mac and Linux payloads from the Metasploit project and make it cross-platform.

  45. Neam wrote on ::

    Oh well, use internet explorer…

  46. Danny wrote on :

    The race is on. Who will fix their 0 day first?

    http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=6778

  47. free wrote on ::

    bugs happen in every program .. im sure mozilla will fix it really fast
    and thumbs up on the full disclosure .

  48. Ho wrote on :

    I don’t know the technical stuff but I have disabled the javascript as instructed. Now how do I know if my PC has been compromised or that the exploit got thru? Thanks

  49. hkpk wrote on :

    I have loaded the exploit template, nothing happened. If the JIT is disabled in Firefox, lodading the “exploit” is slower. I also disabled the integration of SUN JAVA VM in Firefox, disabled the “next-generation browser integration”, no visible effect, Calc.exe does not starts.

    I have XP SP3, KPF, NOD32, Firefox 3.5 + ABP (NoScript is not installed).

    What is “wrong”?

  50. Yuhong Bao wrote on :

    Tom and free: Mozilla do not normally practice full disclosure. They normally practice responsible disclosure by hiding bugs, but this one got missed.

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