Firefox 1.5 Exploit Code in the Wild

Proof of concept exploit code for an unpatched security flaw in the newly released Firefox 1.5 was publicly posted Wednesday by Packetstorm Security. The problem involves Firefox's history database, which cannot handle extremely long page topics. A malicious Web page could cause a buffer overflow that crashes Firefox each time it is started.

The only way to fix the problem is to manually delete the history.dat file before Firefox is started. "This vulnerability has been tested and does work, and no known patches are available at this time," wrote John Bambenek on the SANS Internet Storm Center. "Presumably, if the topic was more tightly crafted than in the proof-of-concept code, a more malicious attack could be crafted that would install malware on the machine."