CVE-2021-38498 Use after free in Firefox

What is CVE-2021-38498?

CVE-2021-38498 is a high-severity use after free vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox, published on 3 Nov 2021. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

During process shutdown, a document could have caused a use-after-free of a languages service object, leading to memory corruption and a potentially exploitable crash. This vulnerability affects Firefox < 93, Thunderbird < 91.2, and Firefox ESR < 91.2.

Weakness: CWE-416

Which versions are affected by CVE-2021-38498?

It affects 3 products.

Products include Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Firefox Esr, Mozilla Thunderbird.

How do I fix CVE-2021-38498?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade to the fixed version. These bugs are found with fuzzing and sanitisers and avoided by memory-safe languages. More about Use after free.

Is CVE-2021-38498 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2021-38498 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Mozilla Firefox

• CVE-2019-11708 Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird Sandbox Escape Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2010-3765 Mozilla Multiple Products Remote Code Execution Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2022-26486 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.6
• CVE-2022-26485 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited High 8.8
• CVE-2019-11707 Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird Type Confusion Exploited High 8.8

All Mozilla Firefox vulnerabilities

Sources

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

Also known as GHSA-f7wc-pcqv-5mwm, UBUNTU-CVE-2021-38498.