CVE-2021-29984

Instruction reordering resulted in a sequence of instructions that would cause an object to be incorrectly considered during garbage collection. This led to memory corruption and a potentially exploitable crash. This vulnerability affects Thunderbird < 78.13, Thunderbird < 91, Firefox ESR < 78.13, and Firefox < 91.

Weakness

The product writes data past the end, or before the beginning, of the intended buffer.

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, many languages that perform their own memory management, such as Java and Perl, are not subject to buffer overflows. Other languages, such as Ada and C#, typically provide overflow protection, but the protection can be disabled by the programmer.

• Be wary that a language’s interface to native code may still be subject to overflows, even if the language itself is theoretically safe.

• Use a vetted library or framework that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.

• Examples include the Safe C String Library (SafeStr) by Messier and Viega [REF-57], and the Strsafe.h library from Microsoft [REF-56]. These libraries provide safer versions of overflow-prone string-handling functions.

• Use automatic buffer overflow detection mechanisms that are offered by certain compilers or compiler extensions. Examples include: the Microsoft Visual Studio /GS flag, Fedora/Red Hat FORTIFY_SOURCE GCC flag, StackGuard, and ProPolice, which provide various mechanisms including canary-based detection and range/index checking.

• D3-SFCV (Stack Frame Canary Validation) from D3FEND [REF-1334] discusses canary-based detection in detail.

• Consider adhering to the following rules when allocating and managing an application’s memory:

• Run or compile the software using features or extensions that randomly arrange the positions of a program’s executable and libraries in memory. Because this makes the addresses unpredictable, it can prevent an attacker from reliably jumping to exploitable code.

• Examples include Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) [REF-58] [REF-60] and Position-Independent Executables (PIE) [REF-64]. Imported modules may be similarly realigned if their default memory addresses conflict with other modules, in a process known as “rebasing” (for Windows) and “prelinking” (for Linux) [REF-1332] using randomly generated addresses. ASLR for libraries cannot be used in conjunction with prelink since it would require relocating the libraries at run-time, defeating the whole purpose of prelinking.

• For more information on these techniques see D3-SAOR (Segment Address Offset Randomization) from D3FEND [REF-1335].

• Use a CPU and operating system that offers Data Execution Protection (using hardware NX or XD bits) or the equivalent techniques that simulate this feature in software, such as PaX [REF-60] [REF-61]. These techniques ensure that any instruction executed is exclusively at a memory address that is part of the code segment.

• For more information on these techniques see D3-PSEP (Process Segment Execution Prevention) from D3FEND [REF-1336].

References

• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1720031
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202202-03
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202208-14
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2021-33/
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2021-34/
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2021-35/
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2021-36/
• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1720031
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202202-03
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202208-14
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2021-33/
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2021-34/
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2021-35/
• https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2021-36/