CVE-2017-5377 in Firefox
Summary
by MITRE
A memory corruption vulnerability in Skia that can occur when using transforms to make gradients, resulting in a potentially exploitable crash. This vulnerability affects Firefox < 51.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 08/02/2020
The vulnerability identified as CVE-2017-5377 represents a critical memory corruption issue within the Skia graphics library component that forms part of Mozilla Firefox's rendering engine. This flaw specifically manifests when the browser processes gradient transformations, creating conditions where memory corruption can occur during the rendering of graphical elements. The vulnerability's exploitation potential stems from the fact that it can lead to a crash that may be leveraged for remote code execution, making it particularly dangerous in the context of web browser security.
The technical root cause of this vulnerability lies in improper memory management within Skia's gradient transformation handling code. When Firefox processes complex gradient effects with various transform operations, the memory allocation and deallocation routines fail to properly validate input parameters or handle edge cases in the transformation matrices. This leads to memory corruption that can result in heap corruption, stack overflow, or other memory integrity violations. The flaw demonstrates characteristics consistent with CWE-121, heap-based buffer overflow, where the improper handling of gradient transformation data causes memory boundaries to be exceeded during processing.
The operational impact of CVE-2017-5377 extends beyond simple browser instability, as it creates a potential attack vector for remote exploitation. An attacker could craft malicious web content containing specially formatted gradient transformations that trigger the memory corruption when rendered by an affected Firefox version. This vulnerability aligns with ATT&CK technique T1059.007 for command and scripting interpreter, where the exploitation could potentially lead to arbitrary code execution. The crash conditions that result from this vulnerability provide attackers with opportunities to perform memory corruption attacks that could be chained with other exploitation techniques to achieve full system compromise.
Firefox versions prior to 51.0 are affected by this vulnerability, making the patching timeline crucial for system administrators and security professionals. The vulnerability's exploitation requires a user to visit a malicious website containing crafted gradient content, making it a browser-based attack vector that relies on social engineering or compromised websites. Organizations should prioritize immediate patching of affected systems and consider implementing additional security measures such as content filtering and sandboxing to mitigate the risk of exploitation. The vulnerability also highlights the importance of regular security updates for graphics libraries and the need for comprehensive testing of rendering components in web browsers. Security teams should monitor for indicators of compromise related to this vulnerability and ensure that their incident response procedures include specific handling for browser-based memory corruption exploits.