===8<=================== Original Nachrichtentext =================== ________________________________________________________________________ From the very-low-hanging-fruit-department Firefox Denial of Service (KEYGEN) ________________________________________________________________________ Release mode: Forced release. Ref : [TZO-27-2009] - Firefox Denial of Service (KEYGEN) WWW : http://blog.zoller.lu/2009/04/advisory-firefox-denial-of-service.html Vendor : http://www.firefox.com Status : No patch CVE : none provided Credit : none Bugzilla entry: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=469565 Security notification reaction rating : There wasn't any appropriate reaction. Notification to patch window : x+n Disclosure Policy : http://blog.zoller.lu/2008/09/notification-and-disclosure-policy.html Affected products : - Firefox 3.0.10 (Windows) - Likely : All Firefox versions supporting the KEYGEN tag. I. Background ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Firefox is a popular Internet browser from the Mozilla Corporation. In 2007 the Mozilla Corporation had a revenue of over 75 million dollars [1], out of which 68 million where made with a search advertising deal, in other words with the search box in Firefox that defaults to Google. I envy the spirit of everyone that works on Firefox code in their spare time, for free. II. Description ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This bug is a simple design bug that results in an endless loop (and interesting memory leaks). Once upon a time Netscape thought it would be a great idea to add the keygen tag () as a feature to their Browser. The keygen tag offers a simple way of automatically generating key material using various algorithms. For instance it is possible to generate RSA, DSA and EC key material. "The public key and challenge string are DER encoded as PublicKeyAndChallenge and then digitally signed with the private key to produce a SignedPublicKeyAndChallenge. The SignedPublicKeyAndChallenge is base64 encoded, and the ASCII data is finally submitted to the server as the value of a name-value pair, where the name is specified by the NAME attribute of the KEYGEN tag." More information: https://developer.mozilla.org/En/HTML/HTML_Extensions/KEYGEN_Tag This feature includes the automatic submission of the public part to a script, the crux. The Keygen tag reloads the document by submitting the public key as an argument to the current URI. Combining this with a javascript body onload() call (or meta refresh) results in an neat endless loop blocking access to the UI. Furthermore memory is leaked during the process. III. Impact ~~~~~~~~~~ The browser doesn't respond any longer to any user input, tabs are no longer accessible, your work if any might be lost. Restarting the Firefox process and restoring the previous Firefox session will re-spawn the tab and start the loop again. According to a Bugzilla entry memory is also leaked during the process. So let's recap, we have a function that generates key material and looping causes memory to leak. One might think this should be important enough to investigate, especially if you know that for DSA for instance, only a few bits of k can reveal an entire private key. [3] Note: I am not saying the memory leaks include key material, seeing the lack of interest this bugzilla ticket triggered, I have not considered investigating further. What I am saying is that if security is taken seriously memory leaks that directly or indirectly happen during key generation need to be investigated thoroughly. IV. Proof of concept (hold your breath) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Live : http://secdev.zoller.lu/ff_dos_keygen.html IV. Disclosure timeline ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ DD/MM/YYYY 14/12/2008 : Created bugzilla entry (security) with (the wrong) proof of concept file. 14/12/2008 : Attached the correct POC file (mea culpa) and a stack trace and details of memory corruption that repeatedly occurred during testing the POC 24/12/2008 : dveditz@mozilla.com comments : "I can definitely confirm the denial of service aspect, and there's a very minor memory leak (after 9 hours of CPU time memory use went from 60MB to 360MB). Haven't been able to reproduce a crash." 27/05/2009 : The 4 month grace period [2] given is reached. Release of this advisory. [1] http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/documents/mf-2007-audited-financial-statement.pdf http://www.guidestar.org/FinDocuments//2007/200/097/2007-200097189-047bbaa9-9.pdf [2] http://blog.zoller.lu/2008/09/notification-and-disclosure-policy.html [3] http://rdist.root.org/?s=dsa ===8<============== Ende des Original Nachrichtentextes ============= # milw0rm.com [2009-05-29]