Mozilla fails to validate the DN of X.509 certificates

Overview

Mozilla fails to verify that the Distinguished Name (DN) of an X.509 certificate is unique when importing it. A denial of service occurs when Mozilla imports a specially crafted, self-signed certificate that has the same DN as an existing Certificate Authority (CA) root certificate.

Description

Mozilla version 1.7.1 and earlier can import a self-signed certificate with the same DN as an existing CA root certificate. When this occurs, the imported certificate will override the CA root certificate. Mozilla will return an error when attempting to create a secure connection to a website whose certificate is signed by a CA root certificate that has been overridden in this manner. A remote attacker can automate exploitation of this vulnerability using the “application/x-x509-email-cert” MIME type. This will permit Mozilla to import the certificate without any user intervention.

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Impact

A remote attacker could cause a denial of service against the certificate store, preventing the user from accessing SSL websites.

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Solution

This issue has been resolved in the following versions:

Mozilla 1.7.2
Firefox 0.9.3
Thunderbird 0.7.3

For other Mozilla-based products, please check with your vendor for updates.

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Vendor Information

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Gentoo Linux Affected

Updated: August 24, 2004

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

We have not received a statement from the vendor.

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

The CERT/CC has no additional comments at this time.

If you have feedback, comments, or additional information about this vulnerability, please send us [email](<mailto:[email protected]?Subject=VU%23784278 Feedback>).

Mozilla __ Affected

Updated: August 23, 2004

Status

Affected

Vendor Statement

We have not received a statement from the vendor.

Vendor Information

The vendor has not provided us with any further information regarding this vulnerability.

Addendum

Please see Mozilla bug 249004.

If you have feedback, comments, or additional information about this vulnerability, please send us [email](<mailto:[email protected]?Subject=VU%23784278 Feedback>).

CVSS Metrics

Group	Score	Vector
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References

• <http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vulnerabilities.html&gt;
• <http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=249004&gt;
• <http://xforce.iss.net/xforce/xfdb/16706&gt;
• <http://secunia.com/advisories/12076/&gt;

Acknowledgements

This was reported on the Mozilla Known Vulnerabilities List. Mozilla attributes this report to Marcel Boesch.

This document was written by Will Dormann.

Other Information

CVE IDs:	CVE-2004-0758
Severity Metric:	5.18 Date Public: