CVE-2016-5293

Severity: medium (CVSS 5.5 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.3% 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-20

Description

When the Mozilla Updater is run, if the Updater's log file in the working directory points to a hardlink, data can be appended to an arbitrary local file. This vulnerability requires local system access. Note: this issue only affects Windows operating systems. This vulnerability affects 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

How to fix

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

References

http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94336
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1037298
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246945
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201701-15
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2016-89/
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2016-90/
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/94336
http://www.securitytracker.com/id/1037298
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1246945
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201701-15
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2016-89/
https://www.mozilla.org/security/advisories/mfsa2016-90/

Get alerted when CVE-2016-5293 or the next vulnerability affects your stack