Firefox update 2.0.0.13 caused crashes, possible hole

While there is no evidence of an exploit as of yet, Mozilla is taking a proactive measure to fix the issue before it could be.

A problem with stability which resulted in crashes and evidence of memory corruption was remedied in Firefox 2.0.0.13, however apparently the fix did not completely close any holes.

In fact, it seems as if it introduced new stability issues, where crashes occurred during JavaScript garbage collection. That feature allows a developer to reclaim the memory occupied by strings, objects, arrays, and functions that are no longer in use.

“We have no demonstration that this particular crash is exploitable but are issuing this advisory because some crashes of this type have been shown to be exploitable in the past,” Mozilla said in an advisory.

Thunderbird is also affected, however JavaScript needs to be enabled. By default, this is not, and Mozilla said it discourages users from running scripts within mail.

JavaScript garbage collection problems have cropped up in the past. In February 2006, Mozilla addressed several issues within Firefox 1.5 which also posed a memory corruption and arbitrary code risks.

Source: BetaNews