CVE-2016-5290

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2018-06-11 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-119

Description

Memory safety bugs were reported in Firefox 49 and Firefox ESR 45.4. Some of these bugs showed evidence of memory corruption and we presume that with enough effort that some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code. This vulnerability affects Thunderbird < 45.5, Firefox ESR < 45.5, and Firefox < 50.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 8.0
Mozilla Firefox: before 45.5.0; before 50.0 — fixed in 45.5.0, 50.0
Mozilla Thunderbird: before 45.5.0 — fixed in 45.5.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Mozilla Firefox 45.5.0, 50.0; Mozilla Thunderbird 45.5.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2780.html
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2825.html
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94335
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1037298
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?bug_id=1309720%2C1297062%2C1303710%2C1018486%2C1292590%2C1301343%2C1301496%2C1308048%2C1308346%2C1299519%2C1286911%2C1298169
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201701-15
https://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3730
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2016-89/
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2016-90/
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2016-93/
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2780.html
http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2016-2825.html

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