Crash in incremental garbage collection in JavaScript

Related Vulnerabilities: CVE-2016-5255  

Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory 2016-71

Crash in incremental garbage collection in JavaScript

Announced
August 2, 2016
Reporter
Jukka Jylänki
Impact
Moderate
Products
Firefox
Fixed in
  • Firefox 48

Description

Security researcher Jukka Jylänki reported a use-after-free in JavaScript caused by how objects and pointers are handled during incremental garbage collection in some circumstances working with object groups. When triggered, this causes a potential exploitable crash but is mitigated by the difficulties in controlling the crash and its output.

References