CVE-2025-1016
Published: 04 February 2025
Summary
CVE-2025-1016 is a critical-severity Out-of-bounds Write (CWE-787) vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Drive-by Compromise (T1189); ranked in the top 45.5% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified are NIST 800-53 RA-5 (Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning) and SI-16 (Memory Protection).
Threat & Defense at a Glance
Threat & Defense Details
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5)AI
Requires timely identification, reporting, and remediation of flaws, directly addressing the memory safety bugs in CVE-2025-1016 through patching to updated versions.
Implements safeguards to protect memory from unauthorized code execution, mitigating exploitation of memory corruption vulnerabilities like out-of-bounds writes in CVE-2025-1016.
Provides vulnerability scanning to identify systems running affected Firefox and Thunderbird versions vulnerable to CVE-2025-1016.
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Memory corruption RCE in browser/email client directly enables drive-by compromise via malicious content and exploitation for client-side code execution.
NVD Description
Memory safety bugs present in Firefox 134, Thunderbird 134, Firefox ESR 115.19, Firefox ESR 128.6, Thunderbird 115.19, and Thunderbird 128.6. Some of these bugs showed evidence of memory corruption and we presume that with enough effort some of these could…
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have been exploited to run arbitrary code. This vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 135, Firefox ESR 115.20, Firefox ESR 128.7, Thunderbird 128.7, and Thunderbird 135.
Deeper analysisAI
CVE-2025-1016 encompasses multiple memory safety bugs, classified under CWE-787 (Out-of-bounds Write), present in Firefox 134, Thunderbird 134, Firefox ESR 115.19, Firefox ESR 128.6, Thunderbird 115.19, and Thunderbird 128.6. Some of these bugs demonstrated evidence of memory corruption, which Mozilla presumes could be exploited to run arbitrary code with sufficient effort. The vulnerability carries a CVSS v3.1 base score of 9.8 (AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H), marking it as critical.
Remote attackers can exploit these flaws over the network without requiring user privileges or interaction. Successful exploitation could enable arbitrary code execution within the context of the affected browser or email client, potentially leading to full compromise of the user's system through high-impact confidentiality, integrity, and availability violations.
Mozilla has mitigated CVE-2025-1016 with patches in Firefox 135, Firefox ESR 115.20, Firefox ESR 128.7, Thunderbird 128.7, and Thunderbird 135. Security advisories MFSA 2025-07 through MFSA 2025-10, along with Bugzilla entries for bugs 1936601, 1936844, 1937694, 1938469, 1939583, and 1940994, provide further details on the fixes and affected components. Practitioners should prioritize updating affected products to these versions.
Details
- CWE(s)