Firefox suffers first 'extremely critical' security hole

[XA04]

Firefox has unpatched "extremely critical" security holes and exploit code is already circulating on the Net, security researchers have warned.

The two unpatched flaws in the Mozilla browser could allow an attacker to take control of your system.

A patch is expected shortly, but in the meantime users can protect themselves by switching off JavaScript. In addition, the Mozilla Foundation has now made the flaws effectively impossible to exploit by changes to the server-side download mechanism on the update.mozilla.org and addons.mozilla.org sites, according to security experts.

The flaws were confidentially reported to the Foundation on 2 May, but by Saturday details had been leaked and were reported by several security organisations, including the French Security Incident Response Team (FrSIRT). Danish security firm Secunia marked the exploit as "extremely critical", its most serious rating, the first time it has given a Firefox flaw this rating.

In recent months Firefox has gained significant market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, partly because it is considered less vulnerable to attacks. However, industry observers have long warned that the browser is more secure partly because of its relatively small user base. As Firefox's profile grows, attackers will increasingly target the browser.

The exploit, discovered by Paul of Greyhats Security Group and Michael "mikx" Krax, makes use of two separate vulnerabilities. An attacker could create a malicious page using frames and a JavaScript history flaw to make software installations appear to be coming from a "trusted" site. By default, Firefox allows software installations from update.mozilla.org and addons.mozilla.org, but users can add their own sites to this whitelist.

The second part of the exploit triggers software installation using an input verification bug in the "IconURL" parameter in the install mechanism. The effect is that a user could click on an icon and trigger the execution of malicious JavaScript code. Because the code is executed from the browser's user interface, it has the same privileges as the user running Firefox, according to researchers.

Mozilla Foundation said it has protected most users from the exploit by altering the software installation mechanism on its two whitelisted sites. However, users may be vulnerable if they have added other sites to the whitelist, it warned.

"We believe this means that users who have not added any additional sites to their software installation whitelist are no longer at risk," Mozilla Foundation said in a statement published on Mozillazine.org.

Source: http://www.techworld.com/security/ne...e=1&pagePos=16
More info: http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=6590




, oh well, it was bound to happen sometime!

[Nick F]

Yeah it was bound to happen, at least they will release a fix in the next day or so I am sure.

[XA04]

Yeah it was bound to happen, at least they will release a fix in the next day or so I am sure.

yeah. faster than m$

[Kezzer]

and i've had about 10 people saying to me "hah, not so good now is it?". It was quite funny when they shut up when i asked them "have you seen the IE flaw list?"

[Trippledence]

and i've had about 10 people saying to me "hah, not so good now is it?". It was quite funny when they shut up when i asked them "have you seen the IE flaw list?"

A very good point before people start haveing a go. Ive never got around to firefox personaly. Opera does me fine.

[shiato storm]

well either way peopel are out there looking for flaws, search hard enough and you'll find one. and as stated before the list at m$ is significant!

[mnet674]

Stop telling people to use firefox and we'll all stay safe

[Dorza]

Source BBC Tech news:

The Mozilla Foundation has said it is "working aggressively" to fix two flaws in its open source Firefox browser.

Against Microsofts 6 month wait for a fix for IEs "critical Flaws". Thats the simple but huge difference between mozilla and MS. Thats all ill say about the matter.

[TiG]

Heh you miss the other vital point, this was spotted before it was exploited, if it was an IE flaw, you would know it because the internet would have gone slow with all the rogue machines out there being overrun...

Nimda, code red are two obvious examples of this....

TiG

[Paul Adams]

Heh you miss the other vital point, this was spotted before it was exploited, if it was an IE flaw, you would know it because the internet would have gone slow with all the rogue machines out there being overrun...

Nimda, code red are two obvious examples of this....

Actually, Nimda and Code Red used a blend of vulnerabilities in IIS and IE which had been identified and fixed months before.

The last place I worked at it was my responsibility to keep the web servers patched and SuS used to keep IE clients patched - I was on holiday when Nimda struck and we weren't affected... I really should have received a bonus for that

[Spunkey]

the end is nigh!! abandon the intarweb!

The thing is FireFox is unlikely to ever have a really malicious virus spread through it as its seen as a competitor to MS and therefore a friend of the hacking community. The most significant part of that report to me, is that the flaw was found by two grey hat coders. Not real 'f-you-up-good' hackers.

[Moby-Dick]

SuS used to keep IE clients patched

We found Sus pretty unreliable as it only seems to work if clients have local admin

GFI Languard Security Scanner was better for brute forcing patches out

[Paul Adams]

We found Sus pretty unreliable as it only seems to work if clients have local admin

Really?
I thought it was set to run as a service so didn't run in the user context?
After setting it up the once I've never had to do it since so I don't know.

GFI Languard Security Scanner was better for brute forcing patches out

Ah, they the guys that produced that network faxing software?
The name "GFI" rings a distant bell (or klaxon, not sure ).

[5lab]

the word 'zelot' springs to mind..

ms are pretty quick at fixing security holes (and cirtainly dont take 6 months), granted they have had more in the past, but i've not seen a critical one in quite a while now. and as it has been said, f/f has had too small a userbase to be worth attacking up till now (similar to apple).

and to state that ff is more 'hacker friendly' so won't get hacked, is unfortunately, complete b*llox. utter trite.

[smtkr]

My guess is that this is a windows only vulnerability. As far as I can tell, you have to log in as root to do serioius damage to a linux system

[BUFF]

ms are pretty quick at fixing security holes (and cirtainly dont take 6 months),

iirc they actually had some that took nearly a year to be patched,