Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HSummary
CVE-2026-16361 is a critical-severity Improper Restriction of Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer (CWE-119) vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox. Its CVSS base score is 9.8 (Critical).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploitation for Client Execution (T1203); ranked at the 23th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to SC-39 (Process Isolation) and SI-16 (Memory Protection) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-46252
Vulnerability Data
Memory safety bugs present in Thunderbird ESR 140.12. Some of these bugs showed evidence of memory corruption and we presume that with enough effort some of these could have been exploited to run arbitrary code. This vulnerability was fixed in…
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Firefox ESR 115.38, Firefox ESR 140.13, and Thunderbird 140.13.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Memory corruption (CWE-119) enabling arbitrary code execution in a client application directly maps to exploitation for client execution.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Directly implements memory protections (e.g., ASLR, DEP, guard pages) that block exploitation of the memory corruption bugs described in CVE-2026-16361.
Enforces process isolation / sandboxing so that memory-safety violations cannot easily escalate to arbitrary code execution with full system privileges.
Requires integrity verification of software/firmware at runtime or load time, enabling detection of unauthorized code introduced via memory corruption.
Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Secure SDLC practices (bounds checking, safe APIs, reviews) directly prevent this class of flaw.
Vulnerability scanning and code analysis directly surface buffer-boundary flaws.
Receiving and triaging vulnerability disclosures commonly includes buffer-related reports.
Developer training on secure coding reduces introduction of memory-buffer errors.
Patching replaces vulnerable code containing buffer-boundary defects.
Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI
Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.
Security testing in development catches out-of-bounds accesses before release, covering most instances of the weakness.
Secure development lifecycle mandates memory-safety practices that directly prevent buffer-boundary violations.
Application security requirements can specify memory-safety rules, but do not prescribe implementation details.
Secure architecture and engineering principles include memory-safe design patterns that mitigate buffer overflows.
Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe buffer operations, directly eliminating CWE-119.