Three-year-old JavaScript Bug Continues to Plague IE7
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Last Friday, Polish researcher Michal Zalewski reported discovering an interesting little JavaScript trick that keeps a user stuck on a Web page even though he's trying to navigate somewhere else. His discovery involves the simple use of a JavaScript event to make it appear as though a browser is displaying any particular URL, when it's not.
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If you've ever had the frustration of working with Ajax in Internet Explorer and have noticed it caching the requests/results, you might want to check out this new post on the JSLabs blog for a helpful hint.   While working on an AJAX project over the weekend, I ran into the following issue: (through a GET request), every time I tried to call a certain function, It was returning the same data (which was supposed to be different each time)   First, he tried just changing the headers (via PHP's header function) to see if IE would understand the new message, but to no avail. He finally figured out that, despite whatever headers were sent or how much the content changed, what he really needed to do was to provide the script some kind of unique identifier with each request (just appended to the url) so that IE knew the request was different. His weapon of choice was a date/time value.
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Six vulnerabilities, one critical, have been patched in the latest round of Firefox patches issued Wednesday. For those keeping score at home, total browser patch counts so far in 2007 stand at Firefox 22, Internet Explorer 8.
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A wave of bugs in the plug-in technology used by Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser has some security experts, including those at US-CERT, recommending that users disable all ActiveX controls.The U. S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), part of the federal government's Department of Homeland Security, put it bluntly in advisories posted in the last two days: encourages users to disable ActiveX controls as described in the Securing Your Web Browser document," the organization recommended.US-CERT's advice was prompted by multiple vulnerabilities in high-profile ActiveX components used by members of the popular Facebook and MySpace social networks, as well as users of Yahoo's music services.Three new vulnerabilities in the photo uploader software used by both Facebook and MySpace were disclosed Monday by researcher Elezar Broad, who on Monday also posted sample attack code for a pair of critical bugs in Yahoo's Music Jukebox.Last week, Broad had pinned the Facebook and MySpace ActiveX controls with two other flaws. All five of the Facebook/MySpace vulnerabilities originated with an ActiveX control developed by Aurigma.As the number of vulnerabilities mounted, security professionals began ringing the alarm. On Monday, for instance, Symantec analysts urged users to "use caution when browsing the Web" and told IT administrators to disable the relevant ActiveX controls by setting several "kill bits" in the Windows registry.US-CERT, however, offered up more aggressive advice as it recommended users move IE's security level to the "High" setting, which completely disables all ActiveX controls.Setting IE's security level to 'High' disables all ActiveX controls. To get here, select Internet Options from the Tools menu, then click on the Security tab. Click Internet at the top for the zone, then move the slider up to the maximum."That's the easiest way to protect yourself," agreed Oliver Friedrichs, director of Symantec's security response group. "But it can also have an adverse impact on your browsing experience." A compromise, said Friedrichs, would be to disable "only those plug-ins that pose a current and imminent threat," such as the flawed ActiveX controls used by Facebook, MySpace and Yahoo.Disabling individual ActiveX controls, however, requires editing the Windows registry, a task too scary for most consumers to contemplate.Not so in business. "That approach is hard to argue against in the enterprise," said Friedrichs, who noted that there are tools available that let corporate IT administrators push registry changes -- including new keys that disable specific ActiveX controls -- to all users.The SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center (ISC) acknowledged that setting kill bits is beyond the ken of most users; one of its researchers came up with a graphical interface-based tool that sets and clears the kill bits of six ActiveX controls that have been tagged with bugs in the past week. The free tool can be downloaded from the ISC's Web site.The SANS Institute's free 'kill bit' tool provides checkbox-simple settings to disable half a dozen ActiveX controls. It's much easier than monkeying with the Windows registry."This is an easy way to disable the ActiveX control [for people] who don't know how to modify the keys directly," said Friedrichs.As if to emphasize the seriousness of the ActiveX problem, Friedrich's team warned customers Monday that attack code targeting one of the two Yahoo Music Jukebox bugs was on the loose. "Just one day after the proof of concept was released, in-the-wild exploitation was identified in our crawler honeypots," Patrick Jungles, a Symantec analyst, said in an alert to customers of the company's DeepSight threat network.Browser plug-in problems are anything but rare, said Friedrichs. "In the first half of 2007, Symantec counted 237 plug-in vulnerabilities. That's compared to 108 in all of 2006." The vast majority of those bugs -- 89 percent in fact -- were in ActiveX controls, making IE by far the most popular target for plug-in exploits.Last week, Facebook and MySpace said that they had come up with fixes for the vulnerabilities Broad had initially spotted, saying through a spokeswoman that they were "working to individually alert users of any additional steps that need to be taken to ensure user security." The two companies did not immediately respond to queries Tuesday about the newest bugs, however.As of mid-day Tuesday, Yahoo had not yet replied to questions posed the day before concerning the Yahoo Music Jukebox flaws.
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Mozilla is starting to pose a threat to Microsoftâs Internet Explorer after years of being the darling of a strange mix of AOL enthusiasts and techies.
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In a seeming replay of the uproar around last year's WMF vulnerability, a third-party patch has been released for the VML hole in Internet Explorer.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. just can't seem to shake problems with itsÂ MS06-042 update for Internet Explorer. On Tuesday, Microsoft was forced toÂ release its third version of the update because of a new security bug discovered in the update, according to Tony Chor, a group program manager with Microsoft. First released on August 8, the critical patch fixes a handful of problems with the browser, but it has caused headaches for some users. Embarrassingly, it also introduced a security vulnerability into the browser, which was fixed last month. "The original release of MS06-042 introduced a new security vulnerability for IE 6.0 SP1 users which we addressed in a subsequent re-release," he wrote in aÂ Tuesday blog posting. "However... a similar vulnerability was also discovered in IE5.01 on Windows 2000, IE 6.0 SP1 (in a different location), and the original release of Windows Server 2003." Microsoft customers ran into problems with MS06-042 soon after it was released. Web sites that used HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) 1.1 compression to speed up the downloading of images could cause the browser to fail and users of Web-based applications such as PeopleSoft, Siebel, and Sage CRM had problems with the software. Later in August, securityÂ researchers at eEye Digital Security Inc.Â disclosed that Microsoft had introduced a new critical security vulnerability in the update. Two days later Microsoft fixed the eEye bug in the MS06-042 re-release. Apparently this re-release did not address this latest but "similar" vulnerability mentioned by Chor. Microsoft executives could not be reached immediately for comment. Microsoft often re-issues its security updates to fix minor bugs, but the security issue discovered by eEye placed a lot more scrutiny on MS06-042. Ultimately the update proved to be an ordeal for Microsoft's Security Response Center, and for Microsoft customers.
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(InfoWorld) - The Mozilla Foundation has published a fix for a "critical" JavaScript vulnerability in the Firefox browser and the SeaMonkey application suite. The fix, released Monday, targets Firefox versions 2.0.0.2 and 1.5.0.10, as well as SeaMonkey versions 1.1.1 and 1.0.8. An earlier fix for a JavaScript problem allowed scripts from Web content to execute arbitrary code, the Mozilla Foundation said in a security update. The vulnerability allowed uniform resource identifiers in image tags to be executed even if JavaScript was disabled in the program preferences, Mozilla said. Disabling JavaScript does not protect against the flaw, so the foundation recommended that users upgrade the applications to new versions. Mozilla's Thunderbird e-mail client was not affected by the vulnerability, it said. The fix comes on the heels ofÂ criticism from independent security researcher Michael Zalewski regarding Firefox vulnerabilities, including spoofing and phising threats aimed at the newly released Firefox version 2.0.0.2. Mozilla CSO Window SnyderÂ saidÂ she is seeing more customer feedback regarding browser security and hopes thatÂ more independent researchers and customer feedback will help the company patch flaws more quickly. "The browser is one of most critical pieces of software on the computer in terms of something attackers are going after," Snyder said. "Attacks are constantly changing and every software developer needs to recognize new threats as they emerge, but that's nothing new, we've always considered security to be a top priority." Matt Hines, a senior writer at InfoWorld, contributed to this report
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Recent updates to IE contain a serious regression that leaves systems once more vulnerable to a flaw fixed more than two years ago, according to security researchers.
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A major upgrade of HTML is in the works but won't emerge for at least two years.
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By James Coates  Q. I have a problem with your recent praise for the new Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 Web browser regarding handicap issues.   For years I have used "right-click - open in new window" to effectively create tabs that appear at the bottom of the screen.
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More than two months after HD Moore's "Month of Browser Bugs," Microsoft is still scrambling to patch most of the 22 IE vulnerabilities revealed in July -- not to mention the 70 others Moore found in August.
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Â Microsoft is investigating reports of a serious security flaw in Internet Explorer (IE), but has not yet seen malicious code that exploits the reported flaw, the company said Thursday.
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(InfoWorld) - With attackers finding new ways to exploit aÂ critical flaw in Internet Explorer, Microsoft Corp. has released a patch for the problem, ahead of its next scheduled round of security updates. The patch fixes a critical vulnerability in the way Internet Explorer renders VML (Vector Markup Language) graphics. Hackers had been exploiting the flaw, which also affectsÂ some versions of Outlook, for more than a week, and in recent days malicious activity had been on the upswing. More information on the update, which was released Tuesday, can be foundÂ here. The out-of-cycle release is unusual, but not unprecedented. Microsoft generally releases its security updates on the second Tuesday of every month, giving system administrators a predictable way to set aside time to test the new software. Occasionally, the company will release patches ahead of time if a flaw is being widely exploited by attackers. In January itÂ patched a critical flaw in the Microsoft Windows Metafile (WMF) image-rendering engine after it became a widespread problem. With attack code that works on the latest version of Windows XP now publicly available, the VML bug is shaping up as a very serious concern for administrators, said Ken Dunham, the director of Verisign Inc.'s iDefense Rapid Response Team. VML attacks have now "dwarfed the WMF activity in the same period of time compared to last year," he said. By Tuesday, more than 3,000 Web sites were already infecting users with malware that exploited the VML bug, according to Dunham. One week into the WMF outbreak last January, iDefense saw about 600 sites exploiting the problem. Security experts also warn that there are many variants of the VML malware, some of which may be missed by security software. Researchers at iDefense are now looking at a dozen possible variations of the VML exploit code and have confirmed the existence of seven variants, Dunham said. "With WMF there wasn't nearly as much modification. We see a lot of different permutations and obfuscation techniques being utilize with VML attacks." AÂ group of security researchers released a patch for the VML flaw late last week, independent of Microsoft, but criminals have even found a way to exploit the fix. In the past few days they have been circulating phoney e-mails, claiming to be a patch for the VML problem. If downloaded, this fake patch actually installs malicious software on the victim's system, Dunham said. Microsoft's next regularly scheduled security updates will be released Oct. 10. Â ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Meanwhile, a second unofficial fix is out as attacks on Internet Explorer users are reportedly increasing.
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Third party, fire and theft Security researchers have released a patch designed to protect users against an outstanding Internet Explorer vulnerability in the absence of available security updates from Microsoft.â¦
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com staff. Danish security firm Secunia has reported a &quot;moderately critical&quot; window injection vulnerability in Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Netscape, Safari and Konqueror.