Attack Codes Breach Our Browsers

Firefox browser's vulnerability has just been published by the Security researcher Guido Landi after an attack code was released on to several security sites on March 25th, revealing details of a malicious bug, targeting critical and unpatched flaws in Firefox.

It is believed that these flaws can allow attackers to modify the coding and use it to push unauthorised software onto Firefox user's computers, allowing more attackers to load themselves into Firefox as they have done in the past, prior to the release of the code earlier on this week.

Andrew Brandt, threat expert at Webroot, has been commenting on the recent attacks against Firefox. In a statement given to SC Magazine earlier on the week, Brandt expressed: “In the past few weeks, we've seen malware writers up the ante in their bets against Firefox.” Brandt later added that “two new spies came across the transom in the past week, and easily managed to load themselves into a freshly installed copy of Firefox 3.0.7.”

Developers at Mozilla have reportedly taken immediate reaction to amend the flaws uncovered by the newly published code and are expecting to place a patch for the flaw in the new forthcoming Firefox 3.0.8. However, the new 3.0.8 release of Mozilla Firefox is not due to be published until sometime next week, leaving users vulnerable to the hacker's modified codes and allowing unauthorised software to seep into PCs, damaging any applications that are on the station.

The news of the malicious bug in the code is one of many reports to hit the headlines in technology today, highlighting the issues that even web browsers are not as secure as users believe them to be. The last outbreak of hackers hitting web browsers was back in November last year, where Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 and SeaMonkey 1.0.6 were also affected alongside the Firefox 1.5.0.8 release. As shown in the November attacks, hackers are finding stronger ways to attack the internet, including that of crafting authentication certificates and impersonating as websites, email systems and browsers.

The security chief for Mozilla, Window Snyder, is now urging for Firefox users and those of similar browsers to upgrade to the newest versions to prevent user's PCs from being affected from the recent attacks. The new release of the Firefox is due to be released on 1st April, with a further upgrade, Firefox 3.0.9, looking to be released on 14th April.