CVE-2020-15663

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-10-01 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-427

Description

If Firefox is installed to a user-writable directory, the Mozilla Maintenance Service would execute updater.exe from the install location with system privileges. Although the Mozilla Maintenance Service does ensure that updater.exe is signed by Mozilla, the version could have been rolled back to a previous version which would have allowed exploitation of an older bug and arbitrary code execution with System Privileges. *Note: This issue only affected Windows operating systems. Other operating systems are unaffected.*. This vulnerability affects Firefox < 80, Thunderbird < 78.2, Thunderbird < 68.12, Firefox ESR < 68.12, and Firefox ESR < 78.2.

Affected products

Mozilla Firefox: before 80.0; from 78.0 before 78.2 — fixed in 78.2, 80.0
Mozilla Firefox ESR: from 68.0 before 68.12 — fixed in 68.12
Mozilla Thunderbird: from 68.0 before 68.12; from 78.0 before 78.2 — fixed in 68.12, 78.2

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Mozilla Firefox 78.2, 80.0; Mozilla Firefox ESR 68.12; Mozilla Thunderbird 68.12, 78.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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