CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2012-3961

Use After Free

Published: Aug 29, 2012 | Modified: Aug 28, 2020
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
10 HIGH
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
RedHat/V2
6.8 CRITICAL
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

Use-after-free vulnerability in the RangeData implementation in Mozilla Firefox before 15.0, Firefox ESR 10.x before 10.0.7, Thunderbird before 15.0, Thunderbird ESR 10.x before 10.0.7, and SeaMonkey before 2.12 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (heap memory corruption) via unspecified vectors.

Weakness

Referencing memory after it has been freed can cause a program to crash, use unexpected values, or execute code.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Firefox Mozilla * 15.0 (excluding)
Firefox_esr Mozilla 10.0 (including) 10.0.7 (excluding)
Seamonkey Mozilla * 2.12 (excluding)
Thunderbird Mozilla * 15.0 (excluding)
Thunderbird_esr Mozilla 10.0 (including) 10.0.7 (excluding)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 RedHat firefox-0:10.0.7-1.el5_8 *
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 RedHat xulrunner-0:10.0.7-2.el5_8 *
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 RedHat thunderbird-0:10.0.7-1.el5_8 *
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 RedHat firefox-0:10.0.7-1.el6_3 *
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 RedHat xulrunner-0:10.0.7-1.el6_3 *
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 RedHat thunderbird-0:10.0.7-1.el6_3 *
Firefox Ubuntu devel *
Firefox Ubuntu hardy *
Firefox Ubuntu lucid *
Firefox Ubuntu natty *
Firefox Ubuntu oneiric *
Firefox Ubuntu precise *
Firefox Ubuntu quantal *
Firefox Ubuntu raring *
Firefox Ubuntu saucy *
Firefox Ubuntu upstream *
Seamonkey Ubuntu hardy *
Seamonkey Ubuntu lucid *
Seamonkey Ubuntu natty *
Seamonkey Ubuntu oneiric *
Thunderbird Ubuntu devel *
Thunderbird Ubuntu hardy *
Thunderbird Ubuntu lucid *
Thunderbird Ubuntu natty *
Thunderbird Ubuntu oneiric *
Thunderbird Ubuntu precise *
Thunderbird Ubuntu quantal *
Thunderbird Ubuntu raring *
Thunderbird Ubuntu saucy *
Thunderbird Ubuntu upstream *
Xulrunner-1.9.2 Ubuntu hardy *
Xulrunner-1.9.2 Ubuntu lucid *
Xulrunner-1.9.2 Ubuntu natty *
Xulrunner-2.0 Ubuntu natty *

Extended Description

The use of previously-freed memory can have any number of adverse consequences, ranging from the corruption of valid data to the execution of arbitrary code, depending on the instantiation and timing of the flaw. The simplest way data corruption may occur involves the system’s reuse of the freed memory. Use-after-free errors have two common and sometimes overlapping causes:

In this scenario, the memory in question is allocated to another pointer validly at some point after it has been freed. The original pointer to the freed memory is used again and points to somewhere within the new allocation. As the data is changed, it corrupts the validly used memory; this induces undefined behavior in the process. If the newly allocated data happens to hold a class, in C++ for example, various function pointers may be scattered within the heap data. If one of these function pointers is overwritten with an address to valid shellcode, execution of arbitrary code can be achieved.

Potential Mitigations

References