What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2008-5502

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.0 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2008-12-17 · updated 2026-06-16
• Weakness: CWE-399

Description

The layout engine in Mozilla Firefox 3.x before 3.0.5, Thunderbird 2.x before 2.0.0.19, and SeaMonkey 1.x before 1.1.14 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via vectors that trigger memory corruption, related to the GetXMLEntity and FastAppendChar functions.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 8.04, 8.10
• Mozilla Firefox: from 2.0 before 2.0.0.19; from 3.0 before 3.0.5 — fixed in 2.0.0.19, 3.0.5
• Mozilla Seamonkey: from 1.0 before 1.1.14 — fixed in 1.1.14

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.19, 3.0.5; Mozilla Seamonkey 1.1.14. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://secunia.com/advisories/33188
• http://secunia.com/advisories/33189
• http://secunia.com/advisories/33203
• http://secunia.com/advisories/33216
• http://secunia.com/advisories/33421
• http://secunia.com/advisories/34501
• http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-26-256408-1
• http://www.mandriva.com/security/advisories?name=MDVSA-2008:245
• http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2008/mfsa2008-60.html
• http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2008-1036.html
• http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2008-1037.html
• http://www.redhat.com/support/errata/RHSA-2009-0002.html

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