News: Retro attack gets new life, worries browser makers
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Browser flaw may leave you vulnerable to phishing attacks.
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A newly found vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser could allow an attacker to take over a targeted machine -- even one with all its patches up to date.
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Some prompts and websites that download browser plug-ins are turning out to be fronts for malicious programing.
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Recently disclosed security holes that affect Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox could let attackers grab data via malicious Web sites.
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Blog: Symantec technology creates new protection for Internet Explorer users.
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Two recently disclosed vulnerabilities that affect Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista could let hackers nab user data.
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A recent string of high-profile ActiveX vulnerabilities caused the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to advise users to disable the ubiquitous Microsoft browser plug-in technology altogether. The vectors for these recent exploits include a third-party image uploading tool used on both the Facebook and MySpace social networking sites, and flaws found in Yahoo's Music Jukebox, Real Networks' RealPlayer, and Apple's QuickTime.                                                    "We're seeing an increase in exploits aimed at these types of tools that are commonly used with a variety of technologies including social networking sites and multimedia players. As online crime becomes more prominent, malicious actors are taking advantage of these types of vulnerabilities to accomplish their objectives," said a spokesman at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the US-CERT.Security experts contend that there's no end in sight for attacks on the plug-in architecture.One reason is that there are plenty of security holes in ActiveX to be exploited. But another reason is not Microsoft's fault, they say: any technology used so widely will attract hacker attacks. "There's simply a lot of software out there using ActiveX that's either preloaded or embedded that users don't even realize is there, and that's why it was necessary to make the advisory," the US-CERT spokesman said.Although features added in Microsoft's newest Web browser, Internet Explorer 7, may help reduce the problem down the road and push attackers to move on to new targets, ActiveX will remain among the leading programs assaulted by opportunistic cyber-criminals, at least for the foreseeable future, several researchers say. After all, they say, Internet Explorer's status as the most used Web browser makes it an attractive target, just as the Windows operating system has been subject to constant attack for the past decade due to its huge market share. "When hackers spend time trying to find vulnerabilities to exploit, they want to make sure that they can affect the highest number of people," said Will Dormann, a vulnerability analyst at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute CERT.A juicy target that's easier to exploit When you ask researchers which ActiveX exploits make them curl their toes in reaction, the answers don't tend to focus on specific sets of attacks but instead on the sheer volume and variety of the threats, and the vulnerabilities that allow for them.Some of the most prominent examples of ActiveX exploits include malware attacks aimed at Microsoft's Data Access Component (MDAC) software, which was pummeled for years by a broad range of attacks, and problems with the HTML Help ActiveX control module in Internet Explorer that opened it to numerous types of attacks, most notably the Phel Trojan virus.These well-known examples are just the tip of the iceberg for the vulnerabilities that ActiveX exposes users to. One reason is that as Microsoft fixes vulnerabilities in Windows, hackers are moving to easier targets, such as ActiveX, said Randy Abrams, director of technical education at ESET, a maker of anti-malware software. "Applications and plug-ins like ActiveX are the new low-hanging fruit so that's what's being attacked," he said.Abrams believes that ActiveX introduces unnecessary risk in many cases, because it is typically used for nonessential purposes. "The truth is that the ActiveX problem is also based on an irrational love of fashion; it's all about adding functionality to sites and applications to make them look cool, but in actuality it's completely unnecessary," he said. "If it wasn't for this need to make things look fashionable there would be much less risk." But Abrams doesn't expect developers to throttle back ActiveX use despite its security risks: "The cat is out of the bag, and sites now compete to look visually impressive and offer better functionality."Many developers of ActiveX-based applications do a poor job of ensuring security, notes Craig Schmugar, a threat researcher at McAfee's Avert Lab. And that threat grows as the number of ActiveX applications grows. "You can improve developer education, but hackers are likely to keep attacking the soft targets," he said.It's also become easier for hackers to find ActiveX's flaws, thanks to the broad availability of fuzzing tools. "The publicly available fuzz testing tools for ActiveX make it relatively simple to find new vulnerabilities and controls to go after, so people are able to research how exploitable certain applications may be before writing their attacks," said Carnegie Mellon's Dormann. "People are finding new holes all the time and posting them to public mailing lists," he added."One of the most telling things to look at with ActiveX is that security researchers delving into these problems don't get a lot of respect within the vulnerability research community itself," Schmugar noted. "That's mostly because with the sheer number of holes, and all the available fuzzing tools, people look at it like shooting fish in a barrel."IE7 improvements should help over time Microsoft is well aware that ActiveX is both a big target for hackers and one that they can successfully attack. So the company has re-architected its Internet Explorer Web browser in version 7 to limit the scope of well-known attacks methods. Researchers say that the work should eventually produce dividends.For example, the original implementation of ActiveX in IE6 and previous versions exposed binaries to any page visited by users. By contrast, IE7 provides far less access to sites and applications, preventing malware authors from activating code that would let them hack the browser.Microsoft has configured IE7's defaults so that only "safe" ActiveX controls (as determined by Microsoft) can be accessed, and it has enhanced separation of controls to prevent exploits from running roughshod across the entire Internet Explorer application as they often did in the past, researchers said. "IE7's protected mode definitely helps, even if the root cause in the form of ActiveX vulnerabilities is still present, and in the long run it will play a role in convincing attackers to move elsewhere, but with Vista and IE7 in relatively few hands this won't happen soon," said McAfee's Schmugar. Improvements made in the Windows Vista operating system should also help reduce the impact of traditional ActiveX attack techniques, he noted.However, most people use neither Vista nor IE7, so these improvements aren't widely deployed. The majority of users run IE6 on Windows XP, both of whose ActiveX components remain largely unchanged and thus at high risk.Dumping ActiveX is not the long-term solution Given that ActiveX is compatible only with Microsoft's Windows browsers, you might conclude the safest solution to the security threat is to use alternative technologies such as JavaScript.That strategy may work for a while, researchers said. But as alternative browser plug-in technologies gain adoption, they too will become more significant targets for attackers. Researchers cite the increasing attacks aimed at the Mozilla Firefox and Apple Safari browsers as they gained in popularity, as well as the likelihood of more Mac OS-based threats as that operating system continues to gain market share. And JavaScript is no stranger to attacks, either."The issue goes beyond ActiveX. Any plug-in architecture that has a lot of users will suffer from these same issues; anything where you have third party developers writing code that runs inside the browser," said Max Caceres, director of research and development at applications security firm Matasano Security. "As long as developers are building things without putting security at the top of their list of objectives, we'll have these problems, regardless of the plug-in architecture."
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Null hypothesis When Didier Stevens recently took a closer look at some Internet Explorer malware that he had found, something surprised him somewhat.â¦
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Mozilla is working to fix a browser flaw that could give attackers unauthorized access to data on a victim's machine.
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(InfoWorld) - Mozilla updated the preview of Firefox 3.0 to alpha 8 Thursday, unveiling for the first time to users several security features it has talked up for months. Among the security provisions debuting in the new alpha of "Gran Paradiso," the code name for Firefox 3.0, are built-in anti-malware warnings and protection against rogue extension updates, according to documentation Mozilla posted to its Web site. The malware blocker, which was first mocked up in June, will block Web sites thought to contain malicious downloads. The feature, a companion to the phishing site alert system in the current Firefox 2.0, will use information provided by Google to flag potentially-dangerous sites, warn anyone trying to reach those URLs with Firefox, and automatically block access to the site. Mozilla also pointed to a URL that demonstrates the new malware blocker for alpha 8 users. Also taking a bow is a check meant to prevent plug-ins' automatic updates from sending users to malicious sites where they might be infected by attack code or drive-by downloads. Firefox relies on small plug-ins -- called "extensions" in the Mozilla vernacular -- for much of its power and flexibility. Several thousand extensions have been written, the vast bulk of them by outside developers, that do everything from boost browsing speed to block irritating Flash animations. Firefox regularly checks to see if the installed extensions are up to date, and, if not, automatically pulls in the newest version and installs it. "Firefox automatically checks for updates to add-ons using a URL specified in the add-on's install manifest," Mozilla spells out in a developer's document. "Currently there are no requirements placed on these URLs. In particular, [they are not] required to be https. This allows either the update manifest or the update package to be compromised, potentially resulting in the injection of malicious updates. A demonstration of one form of compromise is already public." Most extensions are hosted on Mozilla's own servers -- at the servers feeding its Add-ons site -- but some are not; it's those off-site extensions that Mozilla wants to lock down. To stymie attacks through a compromised extension update, Mozilla will require updates -- both the actual update package and the much smaller "manifest," or notification of an update -- to be delivered over an SSL-secured connection. Or the update must be digitally signed. The change doesn't affect the initial installation of an extension, something Mozilla recognized. "[This] has no impact on the security of initial add-on installs," it told developers in the online guide. This newest preview, which can be downloaded in versions for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux from the Mozilla site, still comes with a warning to end-users. "Alpha 8 is intended for Web application developers and our testing community. Current users of Mozilla Firefox should not use Gran Paradiso Alpha 8," the browser's release notes. Mozilla has not officially committed to a release date for the final version of Firefox 3.0. Computerworld is an InfoWorld affiliate
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Security experts uncovered yet another bug in Internet Explorer this week, one that could let attackers replace the content of any legit site with their own, making it possible to spoof critical pages such as e-bank account access log-in forms or credit
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(InfoWorld) - Hackers are hitting paydirt in their search for browser bugs. According to Symantec's twice-yearly Internet Security Threat Report, hackers found 47 bugs in Mozilla's open-source browsers and 38 bugs in Internet Explorer (IE) during the first six months of this year. That'sÂ up significantlyÂ from the 17 Mozilla and 25 IE bugs found in the previous six months. Even Apple's Safari browser saw its bugs double, jumping from six in the last half of 2005 to 12 in the first half of 2006. Opera was the only browser tracked by Symantec that saw the number of vulnerabilities decline, but not by much. Opera bugs dropped from nine to seven during the period. And while Internet Explorer remained theÂ most popular choice of attackers, no one is invulnerable. According to the report, 31 percent of attacks during the period targeted more than one browser, and 20 percent took aim at Mozilla's Firefox. "There is no safe browser," said Vincent Weafer, senior director with Symantec Security Response. "If you've got a browser, make sure you're configuring it correctly," he added. "That's a far better strategy than running some browser just because you haven't heard of it." Part of the rise is due to the growing market for vulnerabilities, Weafer said. Legitimate companies such as 3Com's Tipping Point and Verisign' s iDefense pay for this information, and there is also a growing black market for exploits. "People are encouraged and getting money for finding vulnerabilities, so now you have more people looking," said Weafer. Browser bugs are also relatively easy to find and exploit, said Marc Maiffret, chief technology officer with eEye Digital Security. "Everyone has realized that targeting the applications on the desktop is a better way to break into businesses and consumers and steal things than server flaws," he said via instant message. Businesses and consumers may both be targets, but home users are the victims in about 86 percent of all attacks, according to Symantec. And the U.S. is the biggest source of online attacks, thanks to its large number of compromised machines with broadband connections, Weafer said. About 37 percent of all online attacks originate in the U.S., he said. While there may have been more bugs in Mozilla than in IE, Symantec gave the open-source project high marks for its bug-fixing. On average, it patched bugs within one day of their public disclosure -- the fastest turn-around of all measured browsers. Opera came in second, averaging two days. Safari was next, with a five-day window, followed by Microsoft, which averaged nine days per patch. Microsoft may lag as a browser patcher, but when it comes to operating systems, the company leads the pack, according to Symantec. The slowest? Sun Microsystems.
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Prepare yourself for "time bomb" exploits that attack web-based systems at a pre-determined time.
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A decade ago, geeks greeted the release of Netscape&#39;s new web browser with great anticipation. A similar sense of expectation surrounded each subsequent version of Netscape Navigator and, to a much lesser
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By Ryan, Jim T  REGION  Exploitive ads proliferate on World Wide Web  Computer experts are advising companies and Web surfers to be wary about what they double-click on, even when visiting trusted sites.
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Microsoft's IE (Internet Explorer) browser has an unpatched vulnerability that could let hackers hijack, then access, Google Gmail accounts, a California security company warned Monday.IE, said Santa Clara-based Cenzic in an alert issued Monday, contains an unspecified cached files bug that, when combined with a cross-site request forgery flaw in the Web-based e-mail service, exposes Gmail account sign-ons and lets others access those accounts and any messages or file attachments there.Although not a bug that can be leveraged remotely -- an attacker must have local, physical access to the PC -- as Cenzic pointed out in its alert, there are scenarios where that's not a limitation. "These vulnerabilities could be exploited such that all users of a shared computer who use Internet Explorer and share a user account -- a common practice at computer kiosks in a library or Internet cafe -- could be vulnerable," said Cenzic.Gmail contributes to the overall vulnerability because its URLs display attachments when viewed using the "View Source" command, the warning went on. IE, however, sports "improper use of caching directives [and] incorrect access checks on cached Internet Explorer files."Together, the bugs could conceivably let someone at a public PC hijack any Gmail log-on credentials that had been entered on the machine since the IE cache had last been purged. IE deletes the contents of its cache only as new files are added -- and the oldest are deleted -- or when the user explicitly instructs the browser to clear the cache using the "Delete Browsing History" command.Microsoft denied that IE even has a bug. "Microsoft has thoroughly investigated the claim and found that this is not a product vulnerability," said a company spokesman Tuesday morning. "In the scenario in question, an attacker would need authenticated access to the system in order to modify files located in the cache. With that level of access, an attacker could install malicious programs that would have more impact than the scenarios described."While true, that did not address Cenzic's scenario; by design, public PCs such as those in libraries, schools or Web cafes do not require authentication to access. Microsoft was not available for clarification.Google did not immediately respond to questions about Gmail's part in the threat