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Researchers Show a Single Malicious Webpage Visit Can Compromise Tor Browser

Published:

29 July 2026 at 11:57:00

Alert date:

29 July 2026 at 13:01:18

Source:

thehackernews.com

Click to open the original link from this advisory

Web Technologies, Mobile & IoT, Zero-Day Vulnerabilities, Operating Systems

Researchers at Nebula Security discovered a patched Firefox JIT vulnerability tracked as CVE-2026-10702 that allows arbitrary code execution within the browser's renderer process. The flaw can be triggered by simply visiting a malicious webpage with no additional user interaction required. The vulnerability also affects Tor Browser, which is based on Firefox, significantly broadening its impact on privacy-focused users. Mozilla rated the bug as High severity and addressed it in Firefox 151.0.3. The ease of exploitation — requiring only a single webpage visit — makes this particularly dangerous for all affected users.

Technical details

CVE-2026-10702 is a high-severity JIT compiler vulnerability in Firefox's MObjectToIterator function triggered when skipRegistration is set to true. Firefox's JIT compiler incorrectly labeled the operation as a read-only even though resolving a lazy property can allocate a replacement dynamic-slots buffer and free the old one. Global value numbering (GVN) then treated a later slots-buffer load as redundant and reused the earlier (now stale) pointer, creating a use-after-free condition. The Nebula Security exploit reclaims the freed allocation, leaks a hidden-class pointer, builds a fake object, and corrupts a Uint8Array to gain arbitrary memory read/write. On Android, it then changes memory protections and redirects a WebAssembly function entry point to ARM64 shellcode. The exploit requires no user interaction beyond visiting a malicious webpage and provides arbitrary code execution inside Firefox's sandboxed renderer process. Nebula Security used this as the first stage of a full browser-to-kernel chain called 'IonStack', combining it with a second-stage Linux kernel futex vulnerability (CVE-2026-43499, dubbed 'GhostLock') to achieve root on an ARM64 Android 17 device. The flaw was introduced in Firefox 147 via Bug 1995077 and is present through Firefox 151.0.2. Firefox ESR 140.12 is not affected. Mozilla's fix removes the custom read-only alias handling from ObjectToIterator and adjusts the related iterator operation. As of July 28, 2026, no in-the-wild exploitation has been confirmed.

Mitigation steps:

1. Update Firefox immediately to version 151.0.3 or later to patch CVE-2026-10702. 2. Update Tor Browser to any release that incorporates Firefox 151.0.3 or later. 3. Note that Firefox ESR 140.12 is not affected by the browser vulnerability. 4. Be aware that updating Firefox alone does not patch the GhostLock kernel vulnerability (CVE-2026-43499); apply relevant Linux/Android kernel patches when available. 5. Monitor for suspicious JavaScript execution patterns involving lazy property resolution and JIT-compiled code. 6. Consider restricting JavaScript execution in high-security Tor Browser configurations (Security Level: Safest) as a short-term mitigation. 7. Monitor the Mozilla security advisory (mfsa2026-54) for additional updates.

Affected products:

Firefox 147 through 151.0.2 (stable release)
Tor Browser (versions incorporating Firefox 147 through 151.0.2)
Android 17 (ARM64
for full IonStack chain)
Linux kernel (affected by GhostLock/CVE-2026-43499)

Related links:

Related CVE's:

Related threat actors:

IOC's:

This article was created with the assistance of AI technology by Perceptive.

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