# CVE-2010-1990: Denial of service in n/a

> Remote attackers can cause denial of service by launching excessive mail applications via crafted HTML documents with multiple mailto iframes.

- **Severity:** Medium 5.0 (`AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:N/A:P`)
- **Exploited in the wild:** Not known
- **Login needed:** Not needed
- **Attackable:** Over the internet
- **Victim action needed:** A user has to click or open something
- **Fix available:** No
- **Published:** 20 May 2010
- **Updated:** 7 Aug 2024
- **Also known as:** GHSA-3jwm-23jh-8fh8

## What is CVE-2010-1990?

CVE-2010-1990 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox, published on 20 May 2010. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.

### Official description

Mozilla Firefox 3.6.x, 3.5.x, 3.0.19, and earlier, and SeaMonkey, executes a mail application in situations where an IFRAME element has a mailto: URL in its SRC attribute, which allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (excessive application launches) via an HTML document with many IFRAME elements.

Weakness: CWE-399

## Which versions are affected by CVE-2010-1990?

It affects 2 products.


Products: Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Seamonkey.

## How do I fix CVE-2010-1990?

No fix has been published for CVE-2010-1990 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.

## Is CVE-2010-1990 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2010-1990 in the wild and no public exploit code.

## Other vulnerabilities in Mozilla Firefox

- [CVE-2019-11708](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-11708/): Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird Sandbox Escape (critical 10.0, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2010-3765](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2010-3765/): Mozilla Multiple Products Remote Code Execution (critical 9.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-26486](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-26486/): Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free (critical 9.6, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2022-26485](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-26485/): Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)
- [CVE-2019-11707](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2019-11707/): Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird Type Confusion (high 8.8, exploited in the wild)

## Fix prompt for AI coding agents

```text
Check this codebase for CVE-2010-1990 and fix it if it is affected.

What it is: CVE-2010-1990 is a medium-severity denial of service vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox, published on 20 May 2010. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2010-1990 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Affected product: Mozilla Firefox. No package-level version data is available, so check the vendor advisory linked from the reference page.

Task:
1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies.
2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it.
3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead.
4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why.
5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing.

Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2010-1990/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2010-1990/index.md)
```

## Sources

- CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2010-1990
- NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2010-1990
- OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2010-1990

---
From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2010-1990/
Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.