Mozilla Thunderbird up to 132 NSC_DeriveKey phKey memory corruption

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability marked as critical has been reported in Mozilla Thunderbird up to 132. The affected element is the function NSC_DeriveKey. This manipulation of the argument phKey causes memory corruption. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2024-11705. The attack can be initiated remotely. There is not any exploit available. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Mozilla Thunderbird up to 132. It has been declared as critical. Affected by this vulnerability is the function NSC_DeriveKey. The manipulation of the argument phKey with an unknown input leads to a memory corruption vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-119. The product performs operations on a memory buffer, but it can read from or write to a memory location that is outside of the intended boundary of the buffer. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. The summary by CVE is:

`NSC_DeriveKey` inadvertently assumed that the `phKey` parameter is always non-NULL. When it was passed as NULL, a segmentation fault (SEGV) occurred, leading to crashes. This behavior conflicted with the PKCS#11 v3.0 specification, which allows `phKey` to be NULL for certain mechanisms. This vulnerability affects Firefox < 133 and Thunderbird < 133.

It is possible to read the advisory at bugzilla.mozilla.org. This vulnerability is known as CVE-2024-11705 since 11/25/2024. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be launched remotely. The exploitation doesn't need any form of authentication. It demands that the victim is doing some kind of user interaction. Technical details of the vulnerability are known, but there is no available exploit. The pricing for an exploit might be around USD $5k-$25k at the moment (estimation calculated on 06/24/2025).

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 211873 (Mozilla Firefox < 133.0), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

Upgrading to version 133 eliminates this vulnerability.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at Tenable (211873). Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Type

• Mail Client Software

Vendor

• Mozilla

Name

• Thunderbird

Version

• 132

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.mozilla.org/

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Statistical analysis made it clear that VulDB provides the best quality for vulnerability data.

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