281673 - Firefox eats the memory until it is killed from Task Manager

Status: RESOLVED EXPIRED

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Pavel Alexeev]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0

When i click on "Advanced Mass Sender 4.2" link under
http://www.getserial.com/index.php?search=a&nn=12 (yes, it's a cracker's site,
but the browser should not behave so anyway), firefox opens a new window and
immediately after that begins to eat system memory until i kill the firefox.exe
process from Task Manager (because it's not possible to work on PC while ff
behaves so). The same behaviour shows mozilla browser under linux (see
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281136 ) so that it relates to the
mozilla/ff common code (possibly gecko?).

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open http://www.getserial.com/index.php?search=a&nn=12
2. Click on "Advanced Mass Sender 4.2"
3. Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc and see the memory consuming of the "firefox.exe" process.
4. After awhile, the ff begins to use your swap file :)
Actual Results:  
Firefox eats the system memory and blocks my work on PC

Expected Results:  
Firefox opens a new browser window and waits for me :)

The same under windows 2000. I have not tested it with the other systems.

Comment 1

[Pavel Alexeev]

Additional Info:
Firefox is just installed, no extensions, no plugins, no configuration changes.

Comment 2

[Vic Ricker]

(In reply to comment #0)
> User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0
> Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-GB; rv:1.7.5)
Gecko/20041110 Firefox/1.0
> 
> When i click on "Advanced Mass Sender 4.2" link under
> http://www.getserial.com/index.php?search=a&nn=12 (yes, it's a cracker's site,
> but the browser should not behave so anyway), firefox opens a new window and
> immediately after that begins to eat system memory until i kill the firefox.exe
> process from Task Manager (because it's not possible to work on PC while ff
> behaves so). The same behaviour shows mozilla browser under linux (see
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=281136 ) so that it relates to the


We had a user report similar behavior using Firefox 1.0 under WinXP SP1 from a
link on the getserial.com site.  (http://www.getserial.com/serial.php?id=33215)
 He also reported that it installed many pieces of malware.  

While he's been reprimanded for visiting such sites, I thought I ought to report
it so maybe the problem can be fixed.

I didn't have time to dig too deeply into the site but one of the pages I looked
at that was loaded into an iframe had javascript like:  shellcode =
unescape("%u4343%u4343....

They're obviously doing something nefarious and they're not even trying to hide
it.  Hehe.  It shouldn't be too hard to figure it out.

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

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Comment 4

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This bug has been automatically resolved after a period of inactivity (see above
comment). If anyone thinks this is incorrect, they should feel free to reopen it.