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Date: 05 March 2009
Click here for printable version
Greetings,
This week has been a notable week for a number of reasons. One of the most common tools that we all use is the web browser, and of course, as a result it is also one of the tools which carry the greatest security risks due to its widespread use and the nature of these tools' use. New vulnerabilities are constantly being identified, actively exploited and fixed in popular web browsers. This week has seen updates for both Mozilla Firefox and Opera released to combat the latest wave of browser vulnerabilities.
Mozilla released a number of advisories relating to Firefox, including three critical vulnerabilities. The most severe of these vulnerabilities can allow the execution of arbitrary code. Mozilla recommends that users upgrade to the latest version, 3.0.7, as soon as possible. Additionally these vulnerabilities exist in Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla SeaMonkey as well, but updates are yet to be released for these packages.
Similarly, version 9.64 of Opera has been released this week to combat similarly severe vulnerabilities, with impacts ranging from the execution of arbitrary code and cross-site scripting, to various certificate related issues. It is recommended that users of Opera upgrade to the latest version as soon as possible.
It is accepted that Facebook is now the most commonly used of all of the social networking websites, it is only logical that this would make it a prime target for malicious activity. The latest threat involving Facebook is a spam email campaign which rewards users who click on the links contained with a nasty piece of malware. This wave of spam emails contain a number of different subject line hooks, such as:
* Your friend just sent you a new drink!
* Facebook online - you are agreeing to the Facebook Terms of Use in your use of Drinking Party.
* Facebook online - Allow Access?
* Facebook message - New Message
* Facebook online -Allowing Drinking Party access
* Facebook online - Add up to 20 of your friends by clicking on their video below.
* Facebook online - You have been invited by your friend
* Facebook message - word wrap in received messages
Detection rates at present for this malware are low, so some anti-virus packages may not be able to detect infection. As always be extremely wary of clicking any links contained within e-mails.
Additionally, we've noticed a large number of web site defacements over the last couple of weeks. Most of these defacements are a result of web server/application vulnerabilities and can be prevented by staying up-to-date with software updates. We recommend that web site administrators, on top of keeping abreast of software updates conduct regular vulnerability scans in a development environment, with programs such as W3AF (Web Application Attack and Audit Framework), Nikto, Burp Suite or Acunetix WVS.
Have a great weekend,
Jonathan.
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