Posts Tagged ‘Mozilla’s Firefox’

Trojan Modifies Firefox to Store Passwords; Infiltrates Protected Storage Area

Monday, October 11th, 2010

Trojan Modifies Firefox to Store Passwords; Infiltrates Protected Storage Area

In a recent blog post, Webroot warned of a Firefox Trojan that forces the browser to save all login credentials by default and subsequently uses the stolen information to create a new user account (username: Maestro) on the compromised machine. It then sniffs out sensitive user data (data forms and login details) from the Windows Protected Storage Area. The data stolen from here is faithfully shipped out to a server once every minute.

The Trojan’s author Salar “Salixem” Zeynali is an Iran-based crimeware hobbyist and heavy metal enthusiast, according to his Facebook profile. With Zeylani choosing his real name above a nom de plume to take credit for the malware, Webroot clearly didn’t have to work too hard to get to him.

“His Facebook profile indicates he lives in Karaj, Iran; He sports an emo haircut, and likes heavy metal music and programming. And, apparently, Zeynali writes crimeware for fun, because he doesn’t sell his keylogger. He offers a keylogger creator tool as a free download from the message board he hangs out on,” Webroot’s Andrew Brandt wrote in the blog post.

“Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who frequent the same message board Zeynali uses to post his keylogger code, and some of those people have clearly been using the keylogger creator tool Zeynali built to create and distribute Trojans.”
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Download a Taste of Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 Ahead of Firefox 3.1 Beta 2

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

With Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 still cooking, Mozilla is offering for download the first taste of Firefox 3.1 Beta 3. Just as Microsoft is working its way up to Internet Explorer 8 Release Candidate, so is Mozilla laboring to produce the first RC Build of its open-source browser. And, when it comes down to Firefox 3.1 codename Shiretoko, a couple of Betas are standing between the browser and the Release Candidate stage, namely Beta 2 and Beta 3.

With baking time on Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 almost over, Beta 3 bits can already be grabbed from Mozilla’s FTP servers. Mike Beltzner, Mozilla User Experience lead, indicated that inserting the Beta 3 milestone before RC was necessary in order to permit features integrated late into Beta 2 to mature to a sufficient level.

“We don’t have full clarity into the nature of our remaining blockers, some of which likely require beta exposure. In order to close this release, a re-triaging (like we did around Firefox 3 Beta 4) is required, both to identify the severity of the remaining blockers and the time required to address them properly. Further, the impact of late Beta 2 landings such as Private Browsing Mode, Worker Threads, Speculative Parsing and TraceMonkey will benefit from multiple beta releases,” Beltzner stated.
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Critical Security Updates for Firefox, Safari

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Critical Security Updates for Firefox, Safari

Apple and Mozilla have each issued updates to fix a large number of critical security flaws in their respective Safari and Firefox Web browsers. The Apple update, which brings Safari to version 3.2, is reportedly causing many users to experience frequent browser crashes.

According to an article Friday at MacFixIt, some of the problems seem related to several Safari plug-ins, including “Concierge” bookmarks manager, “PithHelmet” ad-blocking software, and “AcidSearch” search enhancement software.

Other problems with this update may be related to a new anti-phishing feature built into Safari 3.2 (Firefox and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer have had this feature for more than two years now). MacFixIt and other forums suggest those having trouble with the Safari update should disable the phishing filter and see if that helps. If not, check to see if removing any installed add-ons fixes the problem.

While the Safari update fixes more flaws in the version built for Windows (all 11 flaws fixed in this bundle affect Windows vs. just four on the Mac version), I haven’t yet seen any reports of major problems with the Windows flavor.

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Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Web Browsing

Monday, November 17th, 2008

Top 10 Ways to Speed Up Your Web Browsing

Even in a world where high-speed internet is just a tall house blend away, anyone can get stuck with a slow or uncertain connection at home, in the office, or at the worst possible time while traveling. There are, however, measures anyone can take to ensure they’re getting the most information and functionality they can when crunched for time or pressed for bandwidth—or if you just don’t like waiting for things while online. We’re offering up today 10 tweaks, downloads, and work-arounds for slow connections, slow computers, or just fast-minded people. Read on for the tips that might just save your life some night when 4 Kb/s is all you can muster.

10. Use Google to read HTML copies of huge documents

Ah, Adobe Acrobat. It’s free and universally used to view documents exactly as they’d print, but few things bottleneck a browsing session like an 8MB PDF file, especially if your browser crashes before showing it. But we can all benefit from Google’s zeal to index everything on Earth. If you’ve got a Google Docs or Gmail account, uploading or emailing a PDF gives you an option to view its as an HTML, which is going to come through a lot faster. The same holds for PowerPoint presentations, Word 2007 .docx files, and nearly any document you can find in Google search. One of those work-arounds that’s so simple, you’ll be glad when you remember it when you’re trying to jam through that presentation on a terrible hotel Wi-Fi connection.

9. Use TraceMonkey in Firefox 3.1

More and more developers and established web sites are moving their services online and using JavaScript to create interactive web pages these days. So when you’re browsing Flickr, MySpace/Facebook, or nearly anything made by Google, as a few examples, the speed at which your browser runs all the developers’ code can matter a lot. For more responsive pages, it’s hard to beat the mind-blowing speed of TraceMonkey, the new JavaScript engine for Firefox 3.1. Mozilla offers nightly builds of TraceMonkey-enabled Firefox 3.1 (called “Minefield” when you run it, because it can be a bit, well, buggy), but Windows users can also test drive 3.1 without harming their existing Firefox. Of course, depending on who you ask (and which test you run), Google Chrome’s V8 and the brand-new script engine in WebKit, the foundation of Safari, are potentially faster. In any case, your current browser probably isn’t this fast, so taking these speed demons for a test drive can’t hurt.
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Mobile phone malware in our future?

Friday, October 24th, 2008

Mobile phone malware in our future?

Last week, a new report (PDF) on emerging threats from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center mentioned, among other predictions, that botnets were likely to hit mobile phones sometime in the next year. On Tuesday, I spoke with VeriSign CTO Ken Silva about that possibility and why it might happen within the coming year.

“Criminals will go where the money is,” Silva told CNET News. “If you start doing things of financial interest with your mobile phone, they will find a way to get your money.”

Silva said the mobile phone market is changing. Today’s mobile phones don’t just make phone calls, they stream video and support content. “Most consumers did not care about a smartphone until Windows Mobile, the Apple iPhone, and now Google Android came along. Now more and more consumers want smartphones. Kids want them; it’s a cool phone to have.”

Silva said that smartphones tend to use either Java-based Blackberry OS, Mac OS, or Windows Mobile OS as platforms, and it is this standardization of operating systems that should make it easier for criminals to target their victims. The way mobile users browse the Web already is standardizing. With Windows Mobile you have Internet Explorer, and on Apple’s iPhone you have Safari. Both of these browsers have vulnerabilities that can be exploited, although not always on the mobile version.

Another compelling reason to think malware is coming soon to your smartphone is more bandwidth. Because of the streaming media options, this year’s phones process data much faster than last year’s models.

One possible malware vector might be new application downloads. “People are thirsty for applications to run on their devices,” Silva said. “Despite the fact Apple has gone to great lengths to make sure the applications are signed (and) have gone through a vetting process, users continue to break their iPhone and install software outside the channel.”

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