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Firefox flaw raises phishing fears
ZDNET ^ | 1/7/2005 | Ingrid Marson

Posted on 01/07/2005 3:06:33 PM PST by KwasiOwusu

A vulnerability in Firefox could expose users of the open-source browser to the risk of phishing scams, security experts have warned.

The flaw in Mozilla Firefox 1.0, details of which were published by security company Secunia on Tuesday, allows malicious hackers to spoof the URL in the download dialog box that pops up when a Firefox user tries to download an item from a Web site. This flaw is caused by the dialog box incorrectly displaying long sub-domains and paths, which can be exploited to conceal the actual source of the download.

Mikko Hypponen, director of antivirus research at software maker F-Secure, said this bug could make Firefox users vulnerable to cybercriminals. "The most likely way we could see this exploited would be in phishing scams," he said.

To fall victim to such a scam, a Firefox user would have to click on a link in an e-mail that pointed to a spoofed Web site and then download malicious software from the site, which would appear to be downloaded from a legitimate site.

(Excerpt) Read more at news.zdnet.com ...


TOPICS: Technical
KEYWORDS: browsers; computersecurity; firefox; intertexplorer; kneepads; littleprecious; lowqualitycrap; microsoft; paidshill; redmondpayroll; trollfromredmond
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To: Robert A. Cook, PE

Thank you for the info. At least now I have a working concept of what a DLL file is. It sounds like a problem looking for a place to happen. I guess they need to at least try and share, since there probably wouldn't be any room left on a hard drive if everyone had to have their own unique DLL files. I sure do notice quite a lot of them being checked when I watch Ad-Aware run it's scan.


201 posted on 01/09/2005 12:05:43 PM PST by Pablo64 ("Everything I say is fully substantiated by my own opinion.")
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To: JoJo Gunn
Thanks for the info. They will probably be coming to visit in a few weeks (helping us put an addition on our house) and I'm going to see if they can bring the computer with them. That way I can look over things some more.

We'll see. They may have already made up their minds to get a newer model.

202 posted on 01/09/2005 12:07:50 PM PST by Pablo64 ("Everything I say is fully substantiated by my own opinion.")
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To: KwasiOwusu
I just downloaded Firefox and still use IE. Fonts in Firefox seem strange to me. Either too big, too little, or a bizarre combination. IE does fonts well.
203 posted on 01/09/2005 12:44:39 PM PST by Vision (The New York Times...All the news to fit a one world government)
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To: BigSkyFreeper

Netcraft..


204 posted on 01/09/2005 1:43:45 PM PST by N3WBI3
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To: BigSkyFreeper

No its not, every server reboot means money spent on administration. If I have to buy more MS servers because of their uptime is it a moot point?


205 posted on 01/09/2005 1:44:31 PM PST by N3WBI3
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To: N3WBI3
No its not, every server reboot means money spent on administration.

Actually the line of discussion is server load, not whether you need to buy more servers because you spend more money rebooting the one you have.

206 posted on 01/09/2005 1:52:18 PM PST by BigSkyFreeper (PEST/Suicide Hotline 1-800-BUSH-WON)
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To: KwasiOwusu
84 buttresses my point.

That IIS has a low and stagnant marketshare, while Apache continues to climb?

What I said, is, and I repeat, Dell does far more business online than Amazon. Its not even close.

If we're talking about the ability of the servers to handle the sales, it only makes sense to talk transactions, not total cost, especially since the average cost per item at Dell is much higher than at Amazon.

And a HUGE chunk of Dell's 40 billion in sales is large corporate and government purchases, which aren't done online. I've been involved in many multi-million dollar purchases from Dell -- and we didn't use their web servers to order. Amazon, however, does everything onlline.

207 posted on 01/10/2005 6:50:03 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: KwasiOwusu
have parts of it sounding remarkably like "Das Capital" from Karl Marx.

That's "Das Kapital." You really are bad at German, aren't you? That's twice, give it up.

Anyone can use a piece of software.

Yet you insinuated we were commies because we use Firefox.

Doesn't change the fact that the ideology behind the open source movement will make Charmian Mao proud.

Not really, since Mao believed in the state controlling the people, while Stallman's movement is purely about freedom of the people (a very American thing). I'm not saying I often agree with Stallman's philosophical positions, but at least I understand them. I definitely don't agree with his political positions though.

208 posted on 01/10/2005 6:58:55 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: KwasiOwusu
In every comparison that I have seen, IIS 6 on Windows 2003 Server has simply smoked Apache on any Intel platform in the speed department. IIS 6 simply sizzles.

You're looking from the point of view of tests you've read. I'm looking from the point of view of actually using both. There's more too it than speed, but as I said IIS 6 at least now is competitive since it got new features that the other servers have had for years. Microsoft will always be the technological inferior since they can't seem to innovate, only follow.

209 posted on 01/10/2005 7:02:11 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: KwasiOwusu
hasn't been made unavailable due to computer outages that I know of.

Of course it won't, because they'll have a large redundant cluster, something IIS also only recently learned to do somewhat decently. This doesn't change the fact that Windows can't maintain the production uptime of a *nix system, so various portions of the cluster will be often unavailable.

210 posted on 01/10/2005 7:06:54 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: KwasiOwusu
Dell has annual sales of over $40 Billion, Amazon has annual sales of $5.2 Billion. They are not even in the same league!

Not to get into the "war" per se, but comparing Dell's sales dollars with Amazon's is a bit misleading. One computer sold by Dell may cost $1k - a book from amazon maybe $30. I would EXPECT Dell's annual sales to exceed Amazon's monetarily. Do you have any stats concerning number of sales? THAT would be far more interesting from a number of transactions point of view.

211 posted on 01/10/2005 7:45:48 AM PST by An.American.Expatriate ((This space for let))
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To: An.American.Expatriate; KwasiOwusu

Nevermind, I see the point has already been debated.


212 posted on 01/10/2005 7:53:00 AM PST by An.American.Expatriate ((This space for let))
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To: An.American.Expatriate

Heh. You call that a debate? :)


213 posted on 01/10/2005 8:18:03 AM PST by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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To: BigSkyFreeper
Given that Amazon handels a far higher volume of transactions per second than Dells website There is nothing to argue when it come to which server does better when it comes to load.

Now I applaud dell they are eating their own dog food, they sell mainly windows server so to runn *nix would be as embarassing as well, when MS was caught using the tcp/ip stack from BSD. Windows can be made to be a decent server, as I have said we run it as our front end but all the horse paower in the back is either a Mainframe or Unix both of which scale batter and have better uptime..

214 posted on 01/10/2005 8:21:47 AM PST by N3WBI3
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To: ShadowAce

Actually no, but I see no sense in restating what was already said (and ignored)!


215 posted on 01/10/2005 8:24:30 AM PST by An.American.Expatriate ((This space for let))
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To: An.American.Expatriate; KwasiOwusu

Yea I tried to bring that up but aparently if a floating point number is set to 1000, rather than 25 it means something in terms of server performance..


216 posted on 01/10/2005 8:27:02 AM PST by N3WBI3
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To: KwasiOwusu
in addition to being the most hacked browser, IE is probably also the most secure.
217 posted on 01/10/2005 8:28:34 AM PST by the invisib1e hand (Leftists Are Losers.)
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To: KwasiOwusu
Makes sense for Dell to have a rock solid platform to have their web transactions on: WINDOWS SERVERS.

You seem to be missing the point entirely. If I set up my ancient K6-2-350 laptop to run a site selling customized Gulfstream jets, I could blow away Dell's sales if the machine only took five orders per day.

Meanwhile, Amazon's systems are clearly capable of taking 32 orders per second, plus all the product browsing. That is a test of the strength of their customized Linux servers that Dell's Windows servers will never see with their lower volume.

218 posted on 01/10/2005 3:40:34 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: KwasiOwusu
What happens in real life shops is exactly the same thing that happens online. $25 transactions are not the same as $800 transactions.

Yeah, HTTPS really behaves differently when the numbers 25 or 25,000 are transported over it, and decimal really cares if it's storing 25 or 25 million. There are no online retail transactions that would make any of these systems take any more of a load buying computers instead of books.

If you're talking severe reliability and redundancy, Windows doesn't play in that ballpark. You need *NIX on big iron.

You'll find that most of the population (apart from the open source crazies) and most consumers think exactly that way.

Consumers are pissed they didn't get their order, no matter how much they paid.

219 posted on 01/10/2005 4:05:04 PM PST by antiRepublicrat
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To: BigSkyFreeper
Yahoo and Amazon was saturated with so many packets they became "unreachable", while Microsoft kept churning away.

While it may not have been the Mafiaboy attack, nonetheless, Microsoft was indeed taken down by a DDoS around the same time period.

220 posted on 01/11/2005 3:26:12 AM PST by TechJunkYard (my "other PC" is a 4381)
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