CVE-2005-4134 in Firefox
Summary
by MITRE
Mozilla Firefox 1.5, Netscape 8.0.4 and 7.2, and K-Meleon before 0.9.12 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (CPU consumption and delayed application startup) via a web site with a large title, which is recorded in history.dat but not processed efficiently during startup. NOTE: despite initial reports, the Mozilla vendor does not believe that this issue can be used to trigger a crash or buffer overflow in Firefox. Also, it has been independently reported that Netscape 8.1 does not have this issue.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 01/21/2025
This vulnerability affects Mozilla Firefox 1.5, Netscape 7.2 and 8.0.4, and K-Meleon versions prior to 0.9.12, representing a denial of service condition that specifically targets the browser's history processing mechanism. The flaw manifests when a malicious website contains an exceptionally large title field that gets recorded in the browser's history.dat file, creating a performance degradation scenario during application startup. The technical root cause lies in the inefficient processing of history entries during browser initialization, where the system attempts to parse and render these oversized title strings without adequate optimization or resource management. This represents a classic case of inefficient resource handling where the browser's history processing routine becomes CPU-intensive when encountering malformed or excessively large data structures. The vulnerability is classified under CWE-400 as an Uncontrolled Resource Consumption issue, specifically manifesting as a resource exhaustion attack that targets the browser's internal history management system.
The operational impact of this vulnerability extends beyond simple performance degradation to potentially render the affected browsers unusable for extended periods during startup phases. When users attempt to launch the affected browsers, the application experiences significant delays as it processes the history.dat file containing the oversized title entries, leading to a poor user experience and potential productivity loss. The resource consumption pattern typically involves sustained high CPU utilization during the browser's initialization sequence, as the system attempts to process each history entry without proper bounds checking or optimization for large data structures. This behavior creates a scenario where legitimate browser usage becomes severely impaired, effectively creating a denial of service condition that impacts user productivity and system availability. The issue is particularly concerning because it affects multiple browser implementations from the same vendor ecosystem, indicating a systemic design flaw in the history processing subsystem rather than isolated component failure.
The mitigation strategies for this vulnerability involve both immediate user-level actions and long-term architectural improvements. Users should update to patched versions of the affected browsers, specifically Firefox 1.5.1 and later, Netscape 8.1 and later, and K-Meleon 0.9.12 and later, which contain optimized history processing routines. System administrators should ensure that browser updates are deployed promptly across enterprise environments to prevent exploitation. The technical fix involves implementing bounds checking and efficient processing algorithms for history entries, particularly when handling title strings that exceed predefined size limits. Additionally, implementing automatic history cleanup mechanisms that identify and truncate excessively large title entries can prevent accumulation of problematic data. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability aligns with technique T1499.004 for Resource Exhaustion and T1566.002 for Phishing with Malicious Attachments, as it can be exploited through malicious web content delivery. The vulnerability demonstrates how seemingly benign data processing operations can become security concerns when not properly bounded, emphasizing the importance of defensive programming practices and input validation in security-critical applications.