Latest topics > Information disclosure vulnerability of Tree Style Tab and Multiple Tab Handler

Information disclosure vulnerability of Tree Style Tab and Multiple Tab Handler - May 29, 2019

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As already announced at changelogs, an information disclosure vulnerability was found in Tree Style Tab 2.0-3.0.13 and Multiple Tab Handler 2.0-3.0.6.

• The vulnerability was already fixed at TST 3.0.14 and MTH 3.0.7.
• Please be careful if you deactivated auto-update of addons, or using old TST or MTH on old Firefox. I strongly recommend you to update or uninstall them for safety.

Technically detailed description is already published at a GitHub issue. It was a spec bug around APIs for communication with other addons. In short: the API design was not matched to the security model of WebExtensions API itself.

• A WebExtensions based Firefox addon can read privacy data of tabs, only when such a risk was notified on its installation and you intentionally granted that. Title, URL, and "FavIcon" of tabs are such sensitive data.
• TST and MTH are addons providing list-like UI for tabs, so they must require permissions to access such sensitive tab data. You might saw such notification on your initial installation.
• TST and MTH provide API for other addons to notify information of specified tree or multiselected tabs. The data notified via those API were constructed from tabs.Tab objects got via WebExtensions API with their own permissions, and they contained full tab data from both regular and private windows, including title, URL, and FavIcon, without any confirmation. To be honest, I forgot that those properties are not accessible without tabs which is a non-default permission.
• Their API is callable via a general WebExtensions API browser.runtime.sendMessage(), and any addon can call browser.runtime.sendMessage() with no special permission.
• As the result, sensitive tab data were accessible from any other addon with no permission and no warning when TST or MTH was installed.

Currently there is no report about actual such an "attacker" addon. This vulnerability was found by a self-check.

However, it existed for a long time (from initial releases of their versions 2.0 at 2017), and might be known axiomatically with public API documents - attackers might find it out when he read the API spec carefully. If you found any actual attacker example, please tell them me.

I already contacted to community managers of Mozilla, so I will update this announcement if any progress.

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Why I did such a terrible mistake? I think there are mainly two reasons.

First, TST and MTH were originally developed as XUL addons.

In old days, all XUL addons had same permissions: they were allowed to access any data on Firefox. Old API of these addons were also designed on the policy same to XUL addons themselves - there was no concept like permissions for each client addon.

On the other hand, there are some known concepts of WebExtensions: isolated namespaces and secure permission model based on declarations. So users just need to be careful about safety for each addon simply. And, there is one more self-evident (but I missed that) fact: my addons TST and MTH may be allowed to read sensitive data, but other API client addon may not.

This means that it was required that updating the concept of my APIs following to the security model of WebExtensions API itself. But regrettably I forgot to do that - I concentrated to migration of their features and missed this point. As the result, TST and MTH were became like a bigmouth: they got sensitive information out of Firefox and blabbed to others carelessly.

Second, I misunderstood the power of the tabs permission.

The permission name tabs looks like required to do anything around tabs, for example getting a list of tabs. So, because APIs of TST and MTH require id of tabs as their parameter, I thought that "client" addons must have the tabs permission and there was no problem to return full tab information.

But that was misunderstanding. Actually, many WebExtensions API around tabs are callable regardless the addon has no tabs permission, and the permission just appends extra sensitive properties to tab objects. I added tabs to required permissions on very early days of my WebExtensions addon development experience and it was left there for a long time, thus I had no chance to correct such a misunderstanding. Possibly I might specify tabs permission for other addons even if it is unnecessary.

Please remind my mistake as a lesson, if you plan to design callable API for other addons. You need to be careful to treat any data got via WebExtensions API as sensitive, as:

• You should understand the exact effect of the permission you specified at permissions in manifest.json. Don't put needless permissions, and keep it mind that you should make effort to minimize the list of permissions anytime.
• You should build response/notification messages for other addons from scratch, especially without recycling of objects got via WebExtensions API with your own permissions.