CVE-2011-2377 in Firefox
Summary
by MITRE
Mozilla Firefox before 3.6.18 and 4.x through 4.0.1, Thunderbird before 3.1.11, and SeaMonkey through 2.0.14 allow remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory corruption and application crash) or possibly execute arbitrary code via a multipart/x-mixed-replace image.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 11/13/2021
The vulnerability described in CVE-2011-2377 represents a critical memory corruption issue affecting multiple Mozilla-based applications including Firefox, Thunderbird, and SeaMonkey. This flaw exists in versions prior to the specified patches and enables remote attackers to manipulate the application's memory management through specifically crafted multipart/x-mixed-replace image content. The vulnerability stems from improper handling of image data within the browser's rendering engine, particularly when processing multipart content streams that contain image references.
The technical implementation of this vulnerability involves a buffer overflow or memory corruption condition that occurs during the parsing and rendering of multipart/x-mixed-replace content types. When the affected applications encounter such content, the image processing code fails to properly validate or constrain memory allocations, leading to unpredictable behavior. This memory corruption can manifest as application crashes, heap corruption, or in some cases, allow for arbitrary code execution. The attack vector is particularly dangerous because it can be triggered through web pages or email content without any user interaction beyond viewing the malicious content.
From an operational impact perspective, this vulnerability presents significant risks to organizations relying on these browser versions. The potential for remote code execution means that attackers could gain full control over affected systems, making this a high-severity issue for enterprise environments. The denial of service aspect alone can disrupt business operations through application crashes, while the arbitrary code execution capability could enable advanced persistent threats or privilege escalation attacks. Organizations running these vulnerable versions face exposure to both automated exploits and targeted attacks that leverage this memory corruption vulnerability.
The vulnerability aligns with CWE-121, which describes heap-based buffer overflow conditions, and represents a classic example of improper input validation in web content processing. From an ATT&CK framework perspective, this vulnerability maps to T1203 (Exploitation for Client Execution) and T1499 (Endpoint Denial of Service) techniques, as it enables both remote code execution and denial of service scenarios. The exploitation typically requires crafting malicious multipart content that triggers the vulnerable parsing code path. Organizations should implement immediate patching strategies, network segmentation to limit exposure, and monitoring for suspicious content delivery. Additionally, browser security configurations should be reviewed to ensure that multipart content handling is appropriately restricted, and security awareness training should be provided to users about avoiding untrusted content sources that might contain such malicious payloads.