CVE-2024-10468: Mozilla Firefox Race Condition Vulnerability

CVE-2024-10468 Overview

CVE-2024-10468 is a race condition vulnerability in the IndexedDB implementation shared by Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird. Concurrent access to IndexedDB structures can trigger memory corruption, producing a potentially exploitable crash. The flaw affects Firefox versions prior to 132 and Thunderbird versions prior to 132. Exploitation requires a user to load attacker-controlled web content that drives the racy code paths. Mozilla addressed the issue in the November 2024 security releases documented in advisories MFSA-2024-55 and MFSA-2024-59.

Critical Impact
A successful race window win can corrupt browser memory and crash the process, with the potential for further exploitation leading to code execution in the content process.

Affected Products

Mozilla Firefox versions earlier than 132
Mozilla Thunderbird versions earlier than 132
Downstream distributions bundling the affected Gecko engine

Discovery Timeline

2024-10-29 - CVE-2024-10468 published to the National Vulnerability Database
2026-06-17 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2024-10468

Vulnerability Analysis

The vulnerability resides in Firefox and Thunderbird IndexedDB, the browser's client-side transactional storage API. IndexedDB operations execute across multiple threads, including the main content thread and dedicated database threads. Insufficient synchronization between these threads allows two operations to access the same object state concurrently. When the race is won, internal invariants break and memory corruption follows. Mozilla classified the resulting crash as potentially exploitable, meaning the corruption pattern is consistent with follow-on code execution research. The issue is tracked internally in Mozilla Bug Report #1914982.

Root Cause

The underlying weakness is a concurrent execution flaw using shared resource with improper synchronization [CWE-362], compounded by allocation of resources without limits or throttling [CWE-770]. IndexedDB request handlers can be scheduled such that lifetime and state assumptions on shared objects are violated. Once the invariant breaks, subsequent reads or writes touch corrupted memory.

Attack Vector

An attacker hosts a malicious page that opens an IndexedDB database and issues carefully timed transactions, cursors, or object store operations to widen the race window. The victim must visit the page or open crafted HTML content in Thunderbird for the code path to run. No authentication or elevated privileges are required, but user interaction is necessary and the attack complexity is high because the attacker must reliably win the race.

No public proof-of-concept exploit is available for CVE-2024-10468, and no synthetic code is provided here. Refer to Mozilla's advisories and the linked Bugzilla entry for engineering-level detail.

Detection Methods for CVE-2024-10468

Indicators of Compromise

Repeated Firefox or Thunderbird content process crashes on pages that heavily exercise IndexedDB APIs such as indexedDB.open, transaction, and cursor iteration
Crash reports referencing IndexedDB internals in the Mozilla crash reporter or operating system crash logs
Web pages issuing anomalously high volumes of concurrent IndexedDB transactions from a single origin

Detection Strategies

Inventory installed Firefox and Thunderbird builds and flag any version below 132 as vulnerable
Correlate browser crash telemetry with recent navigation history to identify pages that trigger IndexedDB faults
Monitor endpoint EDR telemetry for unexpected child process termination of firefox.exe, firefox, or thunderbird binaries

Monitoring Recommendations

Enable and centrally collect Mozilla crash reports to spot clustering around IndexedDB stack frames
Alert on outbound connections from browser processes to unfamiliar domains immediately preceding crashes
Track browser version compliance in configuration management to confirm patch rollout coverage

How to Mitigate CVE-2024-10468

Immediate Actions Required

Upgrade Firefox to version 132 or later and Thunderbird to version 132 or later on every managed endpoint
Prioritize systems that browse untrusted content or handle sensitive credentials for immediate patching
Restart browser sessions after update to ensure the patched binary is loaded into memory

Patch Information

Mozilla shipped fixes in Firefox 132 and Thunderbird 132. Full details are available in Mozilla Security Advisory MFSA-2024-55 and Mozilla Security Advisory MFSA-2024-59. Administrators using enterprise policy management should push the update through the Mozilla ESR channel or their software distribution tooling.

Workarounds

No vendor-supplied workaround exists; patching is the only supported remediation
Restrict browsing to trusted sites via web filtering while patch deployment is in progress
Consider disabling JavaScript on high-risk endpoints through enterprise policy until Firefox and Thunderbird are updated

bash

# Verify installed Firefox version on Linux endpoints
firefox --version

# Verify installed Thunderbird version
thunderbird --version

# Example enterprise policy fragment to enforce automatic updates
# /etc/firefox/policies/policies.json
# {
#   "policies": {
#     "DisableAppUpdate": false,
#     "AppAutoUpdate": true
#   }
# }