CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2012-3972

Exposure of Sensitive Information to an Unauthorized Actor

Published: Aug 29, 2012 | Modified: Oct 21, 2024
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
5 MEDIUM
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
RedHat/V2
5.8 MODERATE
AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:P
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu
MEDIUM

The format-number functionality in the XSLT 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 obtain sensitive information via unspecified vectors that trigger a heap-based buffer over-read.

Weakness

The product exposes sensitive information to an actor that is not explicitly authorized to have access to that information.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Firefox Mozilla * 15.0 (excluding)
Firefox 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

There are many different kinds of mistakes that introduce information exposures. The severity of the error can range widely, depending on the context in which the product operates, the type of sensitive information that is revealed, and the benefits it may provide to an attacker. Some kinds of sensitive information include:

Information might be sensitive to different parties, each of which may have their own expectations for whether the information should be protected. These parties include:

Information exposures can occur in different ways:

It is common practice to describe any loss of confidentiality as an “information exposure,” but this can lead to overuse of CWE-200 in CWE mapping. From the CWE perspective, loss of confidentiality is a technical impact that can arise from dozens of different weaknesses, such as insecure file permissions or out-of-bounds read. CWE-200 and its lower-level descendants are intended to cover the mistakes that occur in behaviors that explicitly manage, store, transfer, or cleanse sensitive information.

Potential Mitigations

  • Compartmentalize the system to have “safe” areas where trust boundaries can be unambiguously drawn. Do not allow sensitive data to go outside of the trust boundary and always be careful when interfacing with a compartment outside of the safe area.
  • Ensure that appropriate compartmentalization is built into the system design, and the compartmentalization allows for and reinforces privilege separation functionality. Architects and designers should rely on the principle of least privilege to decide the appropriate time to use privileges and the time to drop privileges.

References