CVE-2019-11747

The Forget about this site feature in the History pane is intended to remove all saved user data that indicates a user has visited a site. This includes removing any HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) settings received from sites that use it. Due to a bug, sites on the pre-load list also have their HSTS setting removed. On the next visit to that site if the user specifies an http: URL rather than secure https: they will not be protected by the pre-loaded HSTS setting. After that visit the sites HSTS setting will be restored. This vulnerability affects Firefox < 69 and Firefox ESR < 68.1.

Weakness

The product does not initialize or incorrectly initializes a resource, which might leave the resource in an unexpected state when it is accessed or used.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, in Java, if the programmer does not explicitly initialize a variable, then the code could produce a compile-time error (if the variable is local) or automatically initialize the variable to the default value for the variable’s type. In Perl, if explicit initialization is not performed, then a default value of undef is assigned, which is interpreted as 0, false, or an equivalent value depending on the context in which the variable is accessed.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/26.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/29.html

References

• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-10/msg00011.html
• http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-10/msg00017.html
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1564481
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2019-25/
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2019-26/