RSSSpoofing Flaw Reappears in Firefox
By Ed Oswald and Nate Mook | Published June 7, 2005, 12:33 PM
According to Web security firm Secunia, a seven year-old vulnerability has crept back into Mozilla-based browsers. The flaw allows someone to spoof the content of a Web site, enabling a hacker to make malicious code appear as if it's coming from an otherwise trusted URL.
The bug was originally reported to affect almost every browser on the market, however, including Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, Netscape, and KDE's Konqueror for Linux. The latest Mozilla-based browsers were immune at the time of the initial report, but are now vulnerable.
"The problem is that the browsers don't check if a target frame belongs to a Web site containing a malicious link, which therefore doesn't prevent one browser window from loading content in a named frame in another window," Secunia said last year in an earlier advisory warning of the same bug.
Documentation on the Secunia Web site indicates that KDE, Apple and Opera have fixed their browsers to prevent the issue from being exploited. Microsoft, meanwhile, has offered a workaround for Internet Explorer users.
"The advisory illustrates that vulnerabilities, even those thought resolved, can be introduced during the software development life-cycle," Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security, told BetaNews. "This further reinforces the notion that software requires frequent security review, especially software which is often updated."
Secunia has constructed a test to see if a users browser is affected, which can be viewed on the its Web site. The company recommends that if a user's browser is vulnerable, the user should refrain from visiting trusted Web sites while viewing untrusted ones.
bah! THE most unstable program ive ever used.
I built my machine from the ground up using only WHQL hardware, and it is flawless with *every* thing else I do. 4 day renders, 4 month emule binges, the works. Yet 5 minutes of browsing brings the fox to its knees.
I had a more stable system beta testing IE4 + Win98 years ago.
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|Proof?
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|Well, IE 6 was affected, but on an interesting note, my Netscape 7.2 was not. Funny, since I have tabs completely disabled, and would remove them from the lists/prefs if possible. :P
Guess Netscape fixed it like Opera did?
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|My FF is configured to open a new tab instead of popping up a new window (Tab Preferences plugin.) Nothing injected.
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|If the extensions are so great, why doesn't mozilla incorporate them into firefox? One day they work, the next they're broken or they infect your system. So what the firefox folks now say is: "Don't blame us if we're just as bad as IE!... It's still Microsoft's fault that we can't keep our browser from breaking every week."
But I thought my "browsing experience" was supposed to be secure if I use firefox. No?
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|First of all, Secunia are hacks. This is not a new thing and widely known.
Secondly, every browser is going to have flaws. If it's real, too bad, fix it, move on.
Next...
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|Just another proof that no matter what you use, nothing can ever be truely, and completely, secure
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|Not according to Mozilla and the Spreadfirefox cheerleaders, yleclerc
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|I did not manage to reproduce this flaw, however I have the tabbrowser extension (as Chazwazza stated).
Sometimes the guys at Secunia tend to open their mouth "too much"...
And one word to the pro IE folks:
Do not forget that IE is a 10+ yrs old product and that FF has been around for 1+ yr. Furthermore, FF is more secure now at the age of 1 yr that IE is at the age of 10.
When FF 1.1 and the other versions go public... well... should I continue?
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|Please don't continue. You are comparing a 10yr old to a 1yr old. I too, did not reproduce this as MS has given a workaround.
Though I concede that IE has many other faults, it will be interesting to see the comparison of IE7 and FF with the new technology.
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|Nah - don't bother. We've all heard the "rah rah FF" garbage too often.
Move along, nothing to see here.
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|To all the fools (such as Metshrine), this "flaw" can be fixed by enabled tabbed browsing (as in, open in new links in tabs and not in windows).
Atleast there was an attempt to fix this bug in Firefox...
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|Normally works in Firefox, but it doesn't if your are using the 'Tabbrowser Preferences' extension and the 'Load links in:' setting is set to 'New Tab' instead of 'New Window'. I worked this out when it didn't work for me at first.
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|And here come the firefox fan boys to whine about how its an IE flaw too! Guess what, the flaw was supposedly removed by mozilla years ago, but now its back. Also, this thread has nothing to do with IE and whether or not the flaw exists in it as well, you dont see IE Fan boys coming into a story about an IE flaw and saying "Oh, but its in FF too", so please, dont bring that BS here, just acknowledge there is a flaw, and move on. Oh wait, thats right, 90% of FF users just cant stand that something be wrong with their beloved browser!! OH NO! Let the flaming against me begin, I will not be revisiting this thread so your flames are useless :)
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|I agree. The flaw has a workaround for FF and IE. Why do they continue to bash! As stated above, stop comparing a 10yr old product to a 1yr old product. Wait until IE7 and then begin. At least they might be more credible. Though credible is questionable.
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|Bah. Nothing happened when I clicked the test link at Secunia. Maxthon rules.
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|Firefix. That's funny.
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|*holds opera tight*
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|*holds opera tight*
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|Wow that's bad.
I just did it and Firfox failed like crazy.
That's not good at all.
I should mention that INTERNET EXPLORER does fail this test also.
:D
**Eeek**
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|I just ran Secunia's little test using FF 1.0.4 and guess what? FF passsed the test. No Secunia information was injected into the microsoft page they asked to be opened in the new window. Where do they get this crap? However for you IE fans, IE did in fact fail.
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|Perhaps we should start calling it FIREFIX
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|did you actually run the test on Secunia's site? See above
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|On my computer the flaw worked with FF 1.0.4
It worked with IE also.
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|Hrmph, Lynx isn't effected maybe it's time to switch.
JOKE!
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|Man I love Betanews, but they sure are slow. Wish they'd look at tomshardware.com more often...
Having said that let the IE vs. FF debate begin! Seriously though don't speak up to soon...MS does not consider this a true 'flaw' (nor do I) and has never patched it.
One more thing--most know I am not a FF fan and I am a strong supporter of IE...but geez, talk about blown out of proportion! FF has only been out a year NOT SEVEN!
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|This is a little off topic but everytime I hear about tomshardware.com I get so bothered by that fool. Years ago, I used to write for a online computer software and hardware review site(www.nextdimensionhw.com), where we went to the Jacob Javitz PC Expo in NYC to see what the latest up and comings were. We had stopped by a booth where it was this up and coming company with their own set of defrag and some other system utilities/tools. Sadly, I don't remember the company's name, but after talking to the representative (I believe he was the founder of the company) for a while, asking about their products, he told us he was really annoying and pissed off by this guy named Tom, who had a site called Tom's HW, and just stopped by earlier. He told us how Tom asked him for their software to review or else he'd make them "suffer, fail, and go down to into the ground miserably", but if they offered him the chance to review their products he would "make them rich". The representative was so bothered by his arrogance and threatening tone that he cursed him off and told him to get out of his presence.
Just thought I'd share this with you all.
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|Wow--haven't heard that, though I don't believe it necessarily false either. I'll have to look into that. BTW, you were refering to Tom as "that fool" not me, right?
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|there's a**holes everywhere, but in general i find tom's hw to be a good site. don't let one bad person ruin a generally good hw review site, especially on what's technically "hearsay".
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|I too am an IE supporter. I don't see this a big problem. People blow things up bigger then it actually are.
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|Having some insecurity issues, are we? ;)
I think I'll stick with my Off-By-One browser. :P
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|Tom is so biased he walks like this: /
How do you trust a review site that calls the maker of the product they are reviewing Satan Clara?
http://www4.tomshardware.../01q2/010612/index.html
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|LOL yes, great comment.
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|I won't deny the site has some biased articles--but Tom doesn't personally write them all either. This also is quite an old article...the site overall does seem biased at first as many articles on AMD are very 'biased' towards AMD processors--but the Intel articles are the same way. Ehh...yeah, maybe he is a little biased...
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|Whoever writes his wannabe PC audio articles needs a b****-slap. Those creatures wouldn't recognise quality audio if it reached up and bit them in the ass.
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