Bug 851916 (CVE-2012-3965)

Summary: CVE-2012-3965 Mozilla: Escalation of privilege through about:newtab (MFSA 2012-60)
Product: [Other] Security Response Reporter: Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala <huzaifas>
Component: vulnerabilityAssignee: Red Hat Product Security <security-response-team>
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: urgent Docs Contact:
Priority: urgent    
Version: unspecifiedCC: gecko-bugs-nobody, jhorak, security-response-team, stransky
Target Milestone: ---Keywords: Security
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2012-08-27 03:39:50 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
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Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 847589    

Description Huzaifa S. Sidhpurwala 2012-08-27 03:39:06 UTC 
Security researcher Mariusz Mlynski reported that when a page opens a new tab, a subsequent window can then be opened that can be navigated to about:newtab, a chrome privileged page. Once about:newtab is loaded, the special context can potentially be used to escalate privilege, allowing for arbitrary code execution on the local system in a maliciously crafted attack. 

Reference:
http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2012/mfsa2012-60.html

Acknowledgements:

Red Hat would like to thank the Mozilla project for reporting this issue. Upstream acknowledges Security researcher Mariusz Mlynski as the original reporter of this flaw.

Statement:

Not Vulnerable. This issue does not affect the version of Firefox and Thunderbird as shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6.