CVE-2024-9680 — Mozilla
CRITICALCVE-2024-9680 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Use After Free vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2024-10-15) and has been used in ransomware campaigns — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2024-10-15 — including use in ransomware campaigns. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2024-11-05.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2024-9680.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2024-9680 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 10–50% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
An attacker was able to achieve code execution in the content process by exploiting a use-after-free in Animation timelines. We have had reports of this vulnerability being exploited in the wild. This vulnerability affects Firefox < 131.0.2, Firefox ESR < 128.3.1, Firefox ESR < 115.16.1, Thunderbird < 131.0.1, Thunderbird < 128.3.1, and Thunderbird < 115.16.0.
Affected Products
debian linuxdebianfirefoxmozillathunderbirdmozillaResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
An attacker was able to achieve code execution in the content process by…
An attacker was able to achieve code execution in the content process by…
An attacker was able to achieve code execution in the content process by…
An attacker was able to achieve code execution in the content process by…
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2024-9680 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Constrain what reaches the vulnerable code: limit the size and shape of untrusted input, isolate the affected component in a sandboxed or least-privileged process, and enable the platform's memory-safety mitigations (ASLR, stack protector, hardened allocator) so an out-of-bounds access is more likely to fail closed than to be exploitable.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
The Mozilla Foundation Security Advisory indicates that this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild.
Red Hat has investigated whether a possible mitigation exists for this issue, and has not been able to identify a practical example. Please update the affected package as soon as possible.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2024-9680 (CC BY 4.0)
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Extended Lifecycle Support | firefox-0:128.3.1-2.el7_9 | RHSA-2024:8034 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | firefox-0:128.3.1-2.el8_10 | RHSA-2024:7977 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | thunderbird-0:128.3.1-1.el8_10 | RHSA-2024:8024 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 Advanced Update Support | thunderbird-0:128.3.1-1.el8_2 | RHSA-2024:8030 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.2 Advanced Update Support | firefox-0:128.3.1-2.el8_2 | RHSA-2024:8176 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support | thunderbird-0:128.3.1-1.el8_4 | RHSA-2024:8029 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support | firefox-0:128.3.1-2.el8_4 | RHSA-2024:8167 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 Advanced Mission Critical Update Support | thunderbird-0:128.3.1-1.el8_6 | RHSA-2024:8028 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-9680 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.