CVE-2016-5291 Security feature bypass in Firefox

What is CVE-2016-5291?

CVE-2016-5291 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 11 Jun 2018. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, with no action from the victim.

Official description

A same-origin policy bypass with local shortcut files to load arbitrary local content from disk. This vulnerability affects Thunderbird < 45.5, Firefox ESR < 45.5, and Firefox < 50.

Weakness: CWE-20

Which versions are affected by CVE-2016-5291?

It affects 3 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird.

How do I fix CVE-2016-5291?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Is CVE-2016-5291 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2016-5291 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2016-5291, GHSA-5rpq-63gx-j9m8, UBUNTU-CVE-2016-5291.