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Firefox
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March 2, 2013Firefox will soon begin blocking third-party advertising cookies by default, preventing ad networks from tracking users’ browser activity. Advertisers use cookies to track users’ Web activity to deliver more-targeted ads. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission requested a mechanism to block online tracking, Mozilla offered Do Not Track technology to prevent Web pages from tracking people’s online behavior for advertising purposes. That means sites you’ve visited can leave cookies on your computer but ad networks that don’t already have one on your machine can’t. Some people think it’s a matter of privacy. What if, for instance, you’re researching something online that you don’t want anyone to know about or associate with you. Things like a medical condition, political issue or religion? Firefox 22 will release April 5. Apple’s Safari and Firefox do not allow third-party cookies, Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still allow them by default.
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A new trojan specifically for Macs has been discovered that installs an adware plugin. The malware attempts to monetize its attack by injecting ads into Chrome, Firefox, and Safari (the most popular browsers on Apple’s desktop platform) in the hopes that users will generate money for its creators by viewing (and maybe even clicking) them. The threat, detected as “Trojan.Yontoo.1” by Russian security firm Doctor Web, is part of a wider scheme of adware for OS X that has “been increasing in number since the beginning of 2013,” according to the company. The security firm chose to underline Yontoo because it can download and install an adware browser plugin, making it slightly more modular as attackers could potential swap out the threat for an updated one or a different one entirely. Read Full Article
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December 21, 2012User data is what Google feeds on. Google uses tools which are created for the express purpose of gathering as much information on the everyday consumer as possible. The most insidious of these technologies is the Google Tracking Cookie. The Google Tracking Cookie is a line of code the search engine uses to identify your browser. Unlike most cookies which were linked to the browser via the computer you were using, Google’s tracking cookie assigned each user a cloud-based Google ID. This ID travels with you online, regardless of whether you’re on your mobile device, work computer, or home computer. The cookie follows you as you search the web and feeds information which is filed under your specific Google ID. It pulls from Google’s wide array of information-gathering services. The cookie logs IP address Geographic location Search terms Time and date stamps Vistied Web Sites Browser configurations Gmail information (including the contents of your emails) Photos Google+ (Social Content) Google has been known to slip up in matters of privacy this is cause for concern. If you are like me and do not like Google tracking you every move there is a program out there for Firefox call GoogleSharing. GoogleSharing is a system that mixes the requests of many different users together, such that Google is not capable of telling what is coming from whom. The GoogleSharing system consists of a custom proxy and a Firefox Addon. The proxy works by generating a pool of GoogleSharing “identities,” each of which contains a cookie issued by Google and an arbitrary User-Agent for one of several popular browsers. The Firefox Addon watches for requests to Google services from your browser, and when enabled will transparently redirect all of them (except for things like Gmail or Google+) to a GoogleSharing proxy. There your...
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September 24, 2012Pwn2Own is a computer hacking contest held annually at the CanSecWest security conference and began in 2007. Contestants are challenged to exploit widely used software and mobile devices with previously unknown vulnerabilities. For 2012 the rules were changed to a capture-the-flag style competition with a point system. Google withdrew from sponsorship of the event because the 2012 rules did not require full disclosure of exploits from winners. When Pwn2Own 2012 concluded we saw Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox all being compromised Apple’s Safari was the only browser to be left standing. This was the first year Chrome got hacked it’s been untouchable up till this year. The list of exploits we saw used and executed were CVE-2010-3346 (Internet Explorer) CVE-2009-3077 (Firefox) CVE-2011-0115 (Safari) CVE-2010-0050 (Safari) CVE-2010-0248 (Internet Explorer) CVE-2010-2752 (Firefox) There was another pwn2own this year the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI) sponsored by RIM and AT&T is taking place in Amsterdam. Where hackers were asked to compromise 4 devices BlackBerry Bold 9930 Samsung Galaxy SIII Nokia Lumia 900 Apple iPhone 4S Using exploits of Mobile Web Browsers Near Field Communication (NFC) Short Message Service (SMS) Cellular Baseband What we learned from this information is the iPhone 5 is vulnerable to the same attack that successfully breached an iPhone 4S at the mobile Pwn2Own hacker contest. A fully patched iPhone 4S device was compromised and contacts, browsing history, photos and videos were stolen from the phone. The iPhone took an epic hit when an exploit was built for the vulnerability in WebKit to beat Apple’s code-signing features and the MobileSafari sandbox. The same bug is present in the iOS6 Golden Master development code base, which means iPhone 5 is also vulnerable to the same exploit. Apple iPads and iPod Touch devices are also vulnerable. The Samsung Galaxy S3 can be hacked via NFC allowing attackers to download...