Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:HCVSS and EPSS are reproduced from their sources (NVD, FIRST EPSS). Risk Priority is our own derived reading, not an NVD score.
Summary
CVE-2026-8959 is a critical-severity Improper Input Validation (CWE-20) vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox. Its CVSS base score is 9.6 (Critical).
Operationally, ranked at the 37th 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 AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and AC-4 (Information Flow Enforcement) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-30910
Vulnerability Data
Sandbox escape due to incorrect boundary conditions in the Widget: Win32 component. This vulnerability was fixed in Firefox 151, Firefox ESR 140.11, Thunderbird 151, and Thunderbird 140.11.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
AC-3 directly requires enforcement of access authorizations via the protection mechanism itself.
AC-4 mandates use of information flow enforcement mechanisms to control data movement.
SC-2 requires separation of user and system functionality as a protection mechanism.
SC-28 requires protection mechanisms for information at rest.
SC-3 requires isolation of security functions from non-security functions.
SC-7 requires boundary protection mechanisms to monitor and control external communications.
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.
Systematic verification that security mechanisms operate according to defined standards reduces the likelihood that protection mechanisms are bypassed or disabled.
A.8.25 mandates security requirements, secure coding guidelines, checkpoints, testing (incl. code scans) and developer training in the SDLC, which reaches a slice of input validation defects but leaves the majority (incomplete enforcement, second-order inputs, parser differentials, post-validation canonicalization) unaddressed as in the SA-3 and A.8.28 anchors.
Mandating input controls that include integrity checks and input validation ensures that untrusted data is examined before use, blocking the root cause of many injection and malformed-data weaknesses.
Security-by-design principles explicitly call for data validation and sanitization at every layer, reducing the chance that malformed or malicious input will be processed without scrutiny.
Requiring language-specific secure coding standards, peer review, SAST and documented mitigation of common programming errors forces validation of all inputs before they are trusted.
Testing against a defined set of requirements and using code review plus vulnerability scanning forces validation of inputs and handling of unanticipated conditions, reducing the chance that malformed data will be accepted.
Hardening callouts derived
DISA STIG baselines are authored against specific weaknesses. Where this CVE cites a broad weakness class, the mapping is not asserted at that abstraction (owner ruling, 2026-09-25: grade only at Base and below), so no rule is shown here rather than a rule shown against the wrong grain.
- No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-20, a class-level weakness, and none of its children carries one either.
- No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-119, a class-level weakness. Rules are authored against its narrower children: CWE-823.
- No fine-grained STIG row for CWE-693, a pillar-level weakness. Rules are authored against its narrower children: CWE-654, CWE-757.