Mozilla squashes critical bugs in Firefox
SSL spoofing vuln slain
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Mozilla on Monday issued an update for Firefox that fixes four critical security bugs in the popular open-source browser, including one exposed last week that could make it easy for attackers to spoof SSL certificates used to secure websites.
The vulnerability meant Firefox could be tricked by rogue certificates, a potentially dangerous scenario that could allow attackers to create convincing-looking forgeries of websites used for banking, email and other sensitive services. The technique works by adding a simple null string character to several certificate fields and was independently reported at the Black Hat security conference by researchers Moxie Marlinspike and Dan Kaminsky.
"We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release," a statement on Mozilla's website read.
The SSL vulnerability allowed Marlinspike to create what he called a universal wildcard certificate that caused Firefox to authenticate every domain name on the internet. He did so by applying for a normal certificate for his website thoughtcrime.org. In the commonName field he listed the site as *\0.thoughtcrime.org, causing the browser to believe the certificate was universally valid.
The vulnerability was repaired in version 3.5 of the browser, according to this catalog of security advisories. Curiously, the catalog shows the same hole being plugged in version 3.52, which was released Monday. Separate security advisories for 3.0 show it was also fixed in version 3.0.13.
Mozilla said three of its other products - Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and NSS - are vulnerable to the same attack. Presumably, fixes for those applications will be forthcoming.
The patch plugged other critical holes, including crashes that carried evidence of memory corruption, a heap overflow in certificate regexp parsing and a Chrome privilege escalation due to an incorrectly cached wrapper. Vulnerabilities rated critical typically allow an attacker to remotely execute malware on a vulnerable machine with minimal action needed on the part of the end user.
The patch brings the most recent version of Firefox to 3.5.2. For those who are unable to upgrade to version 3.5 of the browser, the open-source outfit issued a patch that brings the older version to 3.0.13. The vulnerabilities apply to the Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.
It's the second time in 18 days that Mozilla has fixed critical bugs in its flagship browser. Two weeks ago, the foundation rushed out a patch to repair a javascript-based memory corruption bug that was already being targeted in the wild.
Marlinspike said most internet client-side software that implements SSL are vulnerable to the null-string bug, so we'd expect this to be the first of many patches fixing that vulnerability. ®
COMMENTS
@Bob Gateaux
You're either a troll, an idiot, or both.
"they are many more security vulnerability in the beginning" Okay then, prove it - after all, in your own words, "It is not enough to just say what you say".
Anyway, if you weren't interested in using Firefox, why did you read this thread, let alone respond to it?
@ Same Old Same Old
There's no muddying of the waters at all.
Face the facts! Whether FF has as many bugs is irrelevant, the reason IE is less secure is that it is far and away the most widely TARGETED browser.
Which is less secure, a car with both doors unlocked while sitting in an unlocked barn in your back yard, or a car with only one door unlocked sitting in a shopping center parking lot?
IE users have always been, and for the next few years of MS OS dominance will continue to be, far far less secure and we haven't even considered the extra configurability, limitations in features that add to security from FF add-ons.
If you're used to using IE or forced to, good luck to you because it and the associated Outhouse Express are both still the most prevalent way that malware spreads. It could be claimed that it's because more people use this software but once again we're back to that being the reason why these softwares' flaws are targeted, and actually, exploited.
Being open and quick with fixes instead of sitting on them for over a year like MS has done till something is propagating the web and forcing their hand is the right way to minimize vulnerability.
Ever heard of "Patch Tuesday"? Note to Microsoft: If I wanted you to sit on patches, I'd bloody well ask you to. Let's apply that to other areas of life. How about "Bathing Saturday" or "Eating Wednesday"?
I'll get my coat, I've a lot more to write on Text Tuesday.
Another 3.5x release?
That's 2 in 2 weeks...
No wonder they managed to get to 1bn downloads so quick, the number of releases due to security vulnerabilities....
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
Cloud based data management
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
