Vulnerabilities
Misconfiguration
Compliance
CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2012-5840

Use After Free

Published: Nov 21, 2012 | Modified: Apr 11, 2025
CVSS 3.x
N/A
Source:
NVD
CVSS 2.x
9.3 HIGH
AV:N/AC:M/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
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Additional information
NVDhttps://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2012-5840
CWEhttps://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/416.html

Use-after-free vulnerability in the nsTextEditorState::PrepareEditor function in Mozilla Firefox before 17.0, Firefox ESR 10.x before 10.0.11, Thunderbird before 17.0, Thunderbird ESR 10.x before 10.0.11, and SeaMonkey before 2.14 allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service (heap memory corruption) via unspecified vectors, a different vulnerability than CVE-2012-4214.

Weakness

The product reuses or references memory after it has been freed. At some point afterward, the memory may be allocated again and saved in another pointer, while the original pointer references a location somewhere within the new allocation. Any operations using the original pointer are no longer valid because the memory “belongs” to the code that operates on the new pointer.

Affected Software

NameVendorStart VersionEnd Version
FirefoxMozilla*10.0.11 (excluding)
FirefoxMozilla*17.0 (excluding)
SeamonkeyMozilla*2.14 (excluding)
ThunderbirdMozilla*17.0 (excluding)
Thunderbird_esrMozilla*10.0.11 (excluding)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5RedHatfirefox-0:10.0.11-1.el5_8*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5RedHatxulrunner-0:10.0.11-1.el5_8*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5RedHatthunderbird-0:10.0.11-1.el5_8*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6RedHatfirefox-0:10.0.11-1.el6_3*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6RedHatxulrunner-0:10.0.11-1.el6_3*
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6RedHatthunderbird-0:10.0.11-1.el6_3*
FirefoxUbuntuhardy*
FirefoxUbuntulucid*
FirefoxUbuntuoneiric*
FirefoxUbuntuprecise*
FirefoxUbuntuquantal*
SeamonkeyUbuntuhardy*
SeamonkeyUbuntulucid*
SeamonkeyUbuntuoneiric*
ThunderbirdUbuntuhardy*
ThunderbirdUbuntulucid*
ThunderbirdUbuntuoneiric*
ThunderbirdUbuntuprecise*
ThunderbirdUbuntuquantal*
Xulrunner-1.9.2Ubuntuhardy*
Xulrunner-1.9.2Ubuntulucid*

Potential Mitigations

References

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