Hackers claim zero-day flaw in Firefox 398
An anonymous reader writes "The open-source Firefox Web browser is critically flawed in the way it handles JavaScript, two hackers said Saturday afternoon. An attacker could commandeer a computer running the browser simply by crafting a Web page that contains some malicious JavaScript code, Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi said in a presentation at the ToorCon hacker conference here."
Proof? (Score:1, Insightful)
All security bugs are zero-day (Score:5, Insightful)
Today the hackers have to work a bit harder so zero-day attacks are no longer rare. The vast majority of attacks are still from hackers who are reverse engineering the patches and distributing attacks before the patches are implemented.
If someone reports a new attack against open source code it is by definition unknown before it is reported. Therefore all bug reports with security implications are 'zero-day'.
What the idiots who released this exploit mean by 'zero day' was that they didn't allow time for the problem to be fixed before releasing the exploit.
Re:Good policies will often save you. (Score:3, Insightful)
"For the greater good of the Internet" ??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The hackers claim they know of about 30 unpatched Firefox flaws. They don't plan to disclose them, instead holding on to the bugs.
Jesse Ruderman, a Mozilla security staffer, attended the presentation and was called up on the stage with the two hackers. He attempted to persuade the presenters to responsibly disclose flaws via Mozilla's bug bounty program instead of using them for malicious purposes such as creating networks of hijacked PCs, called botnets.
"I do hope you guys change your minds and decide to report the holes to us and take away $500 per vulnerability instead of using them for botnets," Ruderman said.
The two hackers laughed off the comment. "It is a double-edged sword, but what we're doing is really for the greater good of the Internet, we're setting up communication networks for black hats," Wbeelsoi said.
First of all, guys, so you refuse to tell us what the bugs are, so we can't fix them and do this for the "greater good of the internet... setting up communication networks for black hats" WTF? What does having tens of thousands of additional zombie-machines that could DDoS or send SPAM do with the greater good of the internet. I almost hope you try to make money off the bugs (if you even know any more) so you get to know a nice prison cell and "Life without PC"(TM). Honestly, I think those guys are full of it, they probably don't know even one additional vulnerability and just try to show off how "big and powerful" they are.
Re:Good policies will often save you. (Score:4, Insightful)
Web browsers are, by their very nature, huge targets. Their job is to deal with arbitrary data from all over the damn place. The whole thing should probably be sandboxed, but short of that, it shouldn't be running code from random sites.
Re:Proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only difference between a zero-day exploit and a normal exploit is whether the person who finds the exploit allows a fix to be crafted before (s)he releases the bug that allows it.
The main difference between Open Source groups like Mozilla and Microsoft is that (responsible) open source projects will fix potential security bugs whenever they're informed of them and whether or not there is an exploit available, while Microsoft seems to have a habit of holding off on fixing a bug unless the exploit is blatently obvious and/or there is an proof of concept exploit already in existence (and sometimes even in the wild).
Given the way that these guys are touting how Firefox is vulnerable because they were able to find a bug that they refused to warn the firefox team about (like that refusal is Firefox's fault) I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that they managed to get some funding (either direct or indirect) from Microsoftl.
Re:Firefox has become IE (Score:2, Insightful)
Not even close.
"I guess it's time to start using Opera, instead."
If you're looking for a browser that never has any special security flaws to talk of that's still usable for modern web sites, you're up for a hell of a search.
you are deluded (Score:5, Insightful)
complete bullshit and FUD.
you know nothing about these ppl, they are blackhats, they ruin things for no other reason than to piss ppl off and have a laugh at their expense.
Re:Good policies will often save you. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Proof? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"For the greater good of the Internet" ??? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
How Java Script Should Be Handled (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't ask for trouble (Score:2, Insightful)
You couldn't "commander" my computer unless I gave my web browser administrator privileges, and why would anyone do such a foolish thing? Heh.
Re:All Your Base Are Belong To Them (Score:3, Insightful)
If I were them, I'd stay away from the US. We can now use torture to get information about the other 30 exploits. Actually, if I were them, I'd also be looking over my shoulder frequently, as we can use kidnapping and special rendition, too. You know that "black hat" is just a code word for cyber-terrorist!
Re:Slightly offtopic... (Score:2, Insightful)
This seems to be par for the course for ANY application running on Windows. Hackers are now targeting the applications to get to the OS rather than the OS itself. Just about all Windows applications can be comprimised and have been in recent news. This is as much a problem with the applications as it is with the OS. If you application isn't properly sandboxed in the OS, and if it has too high of a privilege level to begin with, then any explot is potentially dangerous to the OS.
The OS should be built with good sandboxed privileges to avoid for bad application development. And then everyone could act as elite as us Linux users when things like this occur.
Re:Good policies will often save you. (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you have any reference to a Mozilla person stating "Firefox is perfect" or "firefox won't ever have any security flaw" ?
Just don't let random sites use Javascript you are letting random sites run code in your computer, with or without security flaws javascript is not going to be safe, it doesn't matter if it is IE, firefox, opera or konqueror.
And mozilla fixes bugs much faster than MS...
Re:Good policies will often save you. (Score:4, Insightful)
No... the only real way to fix it is to leave it there, so you can keep finding and fixing the problems. Removing something doesn't fix it... it removes it and all the functionality that it provides.
Javascript within the browser should be for accessing and manipulating the DOM, and is extremely useful. Whether you are capable of conceiving of uses for it or not says nothing except for the limit of your own imagination.
Javascript is an interpreted language, there are absolutely no fundamental reasons why security holes in implementations should exist, other than that programmers can make mistakes. How many security flaws have been found in document viewers, compression/encryption libraries etc, where no code in the data is run at all?
Selling bugs to the highest bidder (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, right. What they are really saying is, why give away a bug for $500 when we can sell it for much more on the black market?
In fact, the public advertisement of a "zero day exploit" makes a lot of sense if you want to establish yourself as a seller of other undisclosed exploits. Publishing the exploit is a gambit. You will loose the exploit as soon as it gets fixed, but you get your name in the trade press, on Slashdot, etc. Doing so, you establish credibility as a merchant of malware. You can set up shop, and advertise 30 other previously undisclosed bugs. Now, the botnet herders, spammers and other DDOS extortionists know were to buy a new exploit if they need one.
Terrorist Actions?? At least Criminal (Score:3, Insightful)
They are deliberately creating a network for criminals to use for communication purposes, and doping so by stealing computing power from others.
It's theft, it's immoral and these jackasses should, at the very least be locked up on conspiracy charges.
The egotistical little bastards do NOT have the right to commandeer my computer for some kind of secret club for pimply faced assholes to trade exploits and horse porn.
Bastards. (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing they're doing by holding onto the security bugs is making the internet a more dangerous place. Yes, Firefox should have been written better in the first place. Yes, the security team should have found these already. No, none of that justifies the childish actions they're taking now.
Or perhaps they're just talking smack, trying to look like big bad grayhats because they found a single flaw. I'd like to think that.
Re:All Your Base Are Belong To Them (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Slightly offtopic... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One of these guys works for SixApart (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy is simply a liability for SixApart, and should get fired immediately. Imagine what could happen if he manages to get the exploit code for this or one of the other 30 exploits they claim to have discovered into one of SixApart's blogging tools.
But what do we know, maybe they have already done so. Judging from their strange "for the greater good" believes, I wouldn't be surprised about it. I sure as hell wont advise anyone to use any of their products until they've reviewed their code to make sure it doesn't sport one of Spiegelmock's toys.
Re:"Non-disclosure is a heroic endeavor. Be a hero (Score:3, Insightful)
Breaking into people's personal computers is every bit as romantic as shooting someone in the face. The fact of the matter is that an arbitrary execution flaw will not be used to free up the flow of information, except for the flow of information about p3n1s p1lls onto every fresh patch of the `net, always provided to us graciously by zombie machines.
You want to wake up? Here's some up-waking for you: Hacking isn't about allowing "free speech" on the internet (which already exists), it's about getting big money from underground Mafias. These people aren't disclosing the flaws to Mozilla's bug bounty program simply because they think they can make more than $500 via spyware and virii.
we will never have browser security... (Score:2, Insightful)
There is no fix for this. NONE
You either accept executables on web pages and assume the bulk of the websites out there will all use them (and it is getting that way now), or you don't.
We either will have a secure web, or an active web, you cannot have both.
Automated code generating tools will eventually force *multiple 0 day hacks on browsers*, possibly into the hundreds or thousands. You literally won't be able to keep up with the multitude of "emergency patches" required, and it is from a couple things primarily-buffer overflows and active scripting no matter the name of the script.
You cannot make javascript secure because of this "feature", it is *designed* to be an executable. Same with all the other looping zooming call this and bring down that AJAX candy and whatnot shyte.. And you won't get them to stop coding it until they are LIABLE FOR DAMAGES and are forced to offer consumer warranties on released code that is designed to surf the open internet, and I don't care which operating system or license you might care about either, code needs a warranty with it to make it suitable for purposes, just like every other CORPORATION has to offer with their PRODUCT. Once they are liable, they will stop coding crap using junk like javascript. MS is a coprporation that wants to make money, mozilla, the same now, opera, the same, apple, the same. That's where the bulk of the browsers used on the web come from, 99% or better. For-profit corporation, they need to be forced to offer a warranty, simple as that. Once that happens, the pressure will then switch bigtime from those companies literally saying they will not recommend their users go to pages that aren't blessed by no bad code, it will force the web designers to stop using crap that makes people vulnerable and that you are forced to use if you want to surf normally.
Sayng you can "turn off javascript" or use some patch hack is not a solution, that is just pure crap now and everyone knows it, and it never will be. There are too many sites now that require it, and the sites themselves are vulnerable to getting pwned because they use insecure active scripting directly on their web pages. See how this will never be fixable as it stands now?
There needs to be a complete revolution about this, a complete admission that the web has gone offcourse into mega-stupid-land in favor of blinking crap and eyecandy.
And before the first idiot troll reactionary numbnut claims that JS can be made secure-show us that code! Show us that exact magic code you have written in your uberleetness that will make all JS be secure, something every webmaster can go slap on right now and get rid of JS insecurity! Go ahead, you'll be rich!
Re: Retarded moderaton (Score:3, Insightful)
The problems are we can't mod moderations "retarded"; and moderation is secret. These have always been serious slashdot problems. Metamoderation is out of context (and extremely inconvenient to put into context... you know more about the thread when you're reading it than you do when you're metamoderating.)
Slashdot improvement ideas (other than cosmetic) here [slashdot.org].
"sandbox" is a pathetic rationalization here (Score:3, Insightful)
It should also be pointed out the Windows can run a browser from a sandbox, too. Just like Linux, privilege escalation exploits aren't uncommon. And just like Linux, a compromised browser is a major problem.
Re:you are deluded (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why good security is done in layers. If your sole defense against having your user account, your root account, and possibly even your identity owned by some script kiddie is to depend on the maintainers of $PROGRAM to patch all exploitable flaws in a timely manner, this is what you call putting all of your eggs into one basket. For this, there are things like the Gentoo Hardened Project [gentoo.org], which ensure that a mere buffer overflow alone will not grant someone access to your system (of course this is not Gentoo-specific; Gentoo has merely organized such things as PaX and Grsecurity and the toolchain in such a way that it is a relatively simple matter to use the Hardened profile). In my opinion, you're crazy not to take some kind of extra measures like this, if you are going to use a potentially hostile network on a daily basis.
Ideally, the good people who maintain Firefox can stay on top of the arms race to improve the browser's security as fast as flaws can be found. But the odds are against them -- in order to succeed, they have to find every possible security flaw; the blackhats only need to find the one thing that they missed to have a workable exploit. If you don't like being exploited, then this situation is not good. There is no such thing as absolute security, and no programmer is perfect, but precisely because programmers make mistakes, there are non-executable stacks, random memory addresses, user-space SSP protections, chroot() jail restrictions, and many other measures one can take to ensure that security does not have a single point of failure.
One thing in life... (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh and since everyones recomended NoScript, I'd also recomend firewall tools like Sunbelt Keiro Personal Firewall (KPF), which can be configured to pop up a box every time your system attempts to run a program, very handy to stop any spyware/addware/anywhere you don't want loading on your system.
Re:Proof? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to real life. Firefox is getting large enough to be a target. And when a piece of software is a target, people aren't going to just file a bug report when they find an exploitable bug. Look at Windows/IE. Every time you hear about a new exploit on Windows/IE, it's because it's being exploited. It'd be nice if they filed a bug report first, but you definitely can't expect it. They're black hats for a reason, you know.
That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard all week. Black hat hackers release exploits all the time without warning the software's creator. The fact you think Microsoft is involoved says a lot more about you being a Firefox Fanboy than anything else. Get a clue.
So I wrote to SixApart (Score:5, Insightful)
From: [me]
Subject: Responsible disclosure and wreckless behavior
Date: 1 October 2006 14.23.23 GMT-04:00
To: mena@sixapart.com, ben@sixapart.com, brad@danga.com
Cc: mischa@sixapart.com
Hello,
I read this article on ZDNet describing how your employee Mischa Spiegelmock found and revealed a zero-day Firefox flaw:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6121608.html [zdnet.com]
Mischa and his co-researcher Wbeelsoi refuse to reveal specific details on the flaw--or 30 others they found--to the Mozilla Foundation:
"The two hackers laughed off the comment. 'It is a double-edged sword, but what we're doing is really for the greater good of the Internet, we're setting up communication networks for black hats, Wbeelsoi said."
Considering LiveJournal's recent security flaws causing everyone to change their passwords due to browser-based flaws, do you really want someone working for you who makes the problem worse? To be sure, there is merit to the argument that revealing the flaws would allow Mozilla to continue to use a badly buggy implementation; however, there seems to be more to this.
From FireFox's IRC channel, some dialogue from Jesse Ruderman of the Mozilla foundation, who attended (via Slashdot: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=198519&cid
" they claim they can make $10,000 or $20,000 selling a vuln in firefox
compared to $500 telling us about it
selling to other blackhats, anonymously, using onion networks, of course"
Is one of your employees looking to profit of vulnerabilities in Firefox? With the large number of huge enterprises using TypePad and SixApart software, do you really want to risk him embedding JavaScript code to activate this flaw in your products? If he's saving these flaws to profit from them, what's to say he won't look for the bigger payouts of actively punching holes in your products?
That's unlikely--but more likely is that your customers will hear about this and refuse to do business with you because you have an employee who is actively seeking to make the Internet a more dangerous place.
If I misunderstood anything in these articles, I apologize completely. However, what was described in the article was so outrageous that I had to write.
Best regards,
[me]
Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Open source is more vulnerable to 0days (Score:3, Insightful)
Bigger names than yours have made the same claims in bigger forums than Slashdot. The idea is far from being novel. And it is far from being accepted as a complete truth.
Sure - source code does make bug hunting easier. It is reasonable to expect that access to source code would provide a useful tool for development of an exploit. But such access is far from required. Exploits for proprietary, closed source applications have and continue to be developed. And they are every bit as effective as ones developed with aid of access to source code. This doesn't even consider the bugaboo of having your source code "stolen" - a PR nightmare that a couple major names in the IT industry had to face not so long ago.
And we've also heard this time and time again. It will be interesting to see how it pans out. One thing to consider is that Firefox is not the only Open Source application to ever go under scrutiny. However, that may be a bit of apples-and-oranges as Firefox does represent a different type of application. The best one can do is look at the numbers today and make some judgements on the future. Firefox shouldn't be considered a silver bullet. But its track record isn't that bad.
Re:IRC (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, but supply and demand are two separate variables. IE vulnerabilities are a dime a dozen, are they not?
- RG>
IE vs. Firefox (Score:2, Insightful)
Firefox: Hackers "claim" zero-day flaw in Firefox [slashdot.org]
Biased much?
Re:Open source is more vulnerable to 0days (Score:2, Insightful)
Apache has more than 50% on the http-server markets. Care to tell us why it isn't a security nightmare?
Wrote as well... (Score:1, Insightful)