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News: Mozilla Fixes Security Bugs In Firefox Browser 778 Reads

Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 12:47 PM

By Stefanie Hoffman, ChannelWeb
7:44 PM EST Wed. Dec. 17, 2008

Mozilla patched numerous security flaws in its Firefox Web browser Tuesday, six of which were considered "critical," which pave the way for hackers to hijack users' sessions while they surf the Web.

The latest version of Firefox, 3.0.5, repaired a multitude of glitches that could enable remote hackers to execute malicious code that would shut down a vulnerable system or infiltrate a victim's computer and steal information.

One of the most serious vulnerabilities repaired by the update enabled attackers to inject malicious URLs into the session restore feature of the browser. The flaw could be used to violate the same origin policy and launch a cross-site scripting attack, which is often used by hackers to steal financial, identifying and other sensitive information while victims are running SessionStore.

News: Jihadi world angry with India, says al-Qaeda expert 320 Reads

Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - 03:38 PM

Shishir Prasad
Forbes-Network18

MUMBAI ATTACK: Experts say the Arab world feels India is moving closer to Israel, thus the attack on Nariman House.

Abdel Bari Atwan, The Editor-in-Chief of Arabic newspaper Alquds Alarabi, is an expert on al-Qaeda. He became one of the very few Western journalists to interview Osama bin Laden, when he met the elusive figure in Tora Bora caves in Afghanistan in 1996. He went on to write The Secret History of al-Qaeda, an authoritative account of the terror organisation and its methods.

Abdel Bari Atwan talks to Shishir Prasad and Charles Assisi on the ramifications of the Mumbai terror attacks.

Question: What is the significance of the attack on Mumbai in light of what is happening in the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan?

Answer: The most significant reading is that Islamic radical groups are gaining momentum. The US war against terror has failed in its objective. Now that al-Qaeda has returned home [al-Qaeda began in Afghanistan] after seven years in Iraq, they are sharing all their knowledge gathered in Iraq with other Islamic radical groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar. Al-Qaeda is freely operating inside the tribal belt on the edges of Pakistan.

Question: Why do you think a Jewish organisation was targeted in the Mumbai attacks?

Answer: There has always been a criticism of radical Islamic organisations that in most of their attacks they end up killing Muslims only rather than Jewish people (as most of their operations are in the Middle East). The Islamic radical groups are also accused of not being able to attack Israel. They tried to do so in Mombasa [in 2002] but failed to shoot down the plane. I think they were trying to set the record straight.

Question: But why choose an Indian city to attack Israel?

Answer: For a mix of reasons. Many in the Arab world, especially states like Saudi Arabia and UAE think India has switched its allegiance away from the Arab world. There was a time India was firmly behind the idea of Palestine as a free country. Today India is seen as moving closer to Israel in business ties as well as importing weapons from Israel.

But apart from the Israel angle, there has been anger in the Jihadi world over India’s support to the Karzai government in Afghanistan.

Question: What is the reaction that you get to hear in Jihadi world as well as official Arab world position on India?

Answer: I think the official position of Arab states towards India has not changed. They still view it as a friend but the radical groups don’t like the shift in India’s stance. Most Arab states are very scared of the emergence of Iran as a regional superpower. Iran’s nuclear programme may give them nuclear weapon capability soon and that really worries Saudi Arabia and UAE. And radical groups in these places don’t like that India has had close relationship with Iran.

Question: After this attack on Mumbai, what do you think of the position of Pakistan?

Answer: Pakistan is a semi-failed state. And radical groups thrive on such states. Taliban has almost 80,000 people under its Army now. And they would love to see Pakistan descend into anarchy. India should think about this before it considers a confrontation with Pakistan.

Shishir Prasad is deputy editor and Charles Assisi is executive editor at the new business magazine to be launched by Network18 in alliance with Forbes.

News: Script Fragmentation Attack Could Allow Hackers to Dodge Anti-Virus Detection 303 Reads

Friday, November 21, 2008 - 04:13 PM

By Brian Prince
2008-11-21

Stephan Chenette of Websense describes a new Internet attack vector that could allow hackers to bypass anti-virus protection at the both the gateway and the desktop. The technique, called script fragmentation, involves breaking down malware into smaller pieces in order to beat malware analysis engines.

Security researcher Stephan Chenette opened up to eWEEK about a new Web attack vector that can potentially render desktop and gateway anti-virus products useless.

Chenette, manager of security research at Websense, calls the attack script fragmentation. Similar to TCP fragmentation attacks, it involves breaking down Web exploits into smaller pieces and distributing them in a synchronous manner to evade anti-malware signature detection.

“What this attack enables you to do is really get exploit code from the server into the browser memory and trigger the exploit,” Chenette said. “Once you actually are able to trigger that exploit, you own that machine, so that means you can disable anti-virus, you can disable any protection mechanism after the fact.”

The attack works like this: malware authors write benign client code and embed it in a Web page. The only content contained on the initial page will be a small JavaScript routine utilizing XHR or XDR. This code contains no actual malicious content, and the same type of code is found on all of the major legitimate Web 2.0 sites.

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