Address bar spoofing via bidirectional characters
Published Oct 24, 2023 · Updated Dec 18, 2025
Address-bar spoofing in Firefox before 117, Firefox ESR before 115.4, and Thunderbird before 115.4.1 lets remote attackers misstate a visited site. The address bar trims a plain HTTP scheme before applying bidirectional Unicode ordering, allowing crafted right-to-left host and path text to visually reorder the protocol, host, and path. A victim must visit the crafted link; the direct result is misleading location and link-hover text, not code execution or data access.
Summary
What happened
Address-bar spoofing in Firefox before 117, Firefox ESR before 115.4, and Thunderbird before 115.4.1 lets remote attackers misstate a visited site. The address bar trims a plain HTTP scheme before applying bidirectional Unicode ordering, allowing crafted right-to-left host and path text to visually reorder the protocol, host, and path. A victim must visit the crafted link; the direct result is misleading location and link-hover text, not code execution or data access.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-5732
- Published
- Oct 24, 2023
- Updated
- Dec 18, 2025
- Vendor
- Mozilla
- Product
- Firefox
- Classifications
- Unavailable
- Attack vector
- network
- Privileges
- unauthenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Oct 24, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Dec 18, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
Compare these published version ranges with your installed build and any vendor patches.
- Affected versionversion=unspecified <117
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Published CVSS scores
CVSS describes severity. EPSS estimates exploitation probability.
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
No sourced classifications are available.
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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