Welcome to the WrapUp by CyberNet. This is a collection of news stories, downloads, and tips that we have collected over the last few days, but never got around to writing about.
Browser vulnerabilities are nothing new, and they are constantly popping up no matter what software you're using. Today, however, there's an especially eerie one that Ghacks found which currently affects almost all versions of Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8. It's capable of recording all of your keystrokes even after you've left the site that you were visiting.
Mozilla has got to be happy that they're Firefox 3 web browser has received over 12 million downloads since Tuesday, but it took only five hours for the browser's first critical vulnerability to be discovered. Luckily details about the vulnerability have not been made public, and Mozilla has said that there's no known exploit for the bug at this time.
I think it's safe to say that a lot of Firefox users associate the browser with security. It may normally keep you out of harms way, but that's not the case if you downloaded the Vietnamese language pack after February 18, 2008.
Jeff Jones, the Security Strategy Director for Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing group, has assembled a 1-year analysis of Vista's vulnerabilities. In his 6-month review Vista came out on top when pitted up against other operating systems, and stretching the timeline out over a 1-year period didn't yield any different results.
One of the features that I use quite often in Gmail is the filter list. With filters I'm able to forward, apply labels, and delete/archive emails as they come in. Unfortunately this was also a source for hackers to wreak havoc on you.
George Ou, a writer over at ZDNet, will surely be getting some fan hate mail with his latest work of art. He was curious as to how Windows stacked up against Mac OS X in terms of the number of vulnerabilities, and using data from the impartial Secunia he managed to gather some rather interesting facts to say the least.
Mozilla has posted Firefox 2.0.0.7 which is an extremely critical update for all Firefox users out there. There is only one thing that has been fixed, but it's a QuickTime vulnerability that could compromise Firefox and your computer.
Robert Hansen, a security researcher, received a business card from Firefox’s Mike Schaver at a late-night party last week during the Black Hat conference. The card Hansen received, which is pictured to the right, used some colorful words to say that it takes just 10-days for Mozilla to patch critical security bugs that have been disclosed. Here is a snippet from Hansen’s blog post:
At the Black Hat conference this week Mozilla announced a new tool called jsfunfuzz that was developed by their very own Jesse Ruderman. This is something developers can use to test the JavaScript engine for both stability and vulnerabilities. Here’s what Mozilla had to say about it:
We’ve shown you how easy it can be to retrieve passwords stored in your browser, provided that someone has access to your computer. Well, that’s not the only way for a hacker to gain access to some of the information stored in the Firefox Password Manager.
So here we sit, 5-months after the consumer launch of Vista and 7-months after the commercial/business launch. Seeing that security is an important aspect in many people’s lives, Jeff Jones decided to see how Vista stacked up more than 6-months after its release.
A new Firefox vulnerability has been discovered, and this time it is quite a doozy. It affects many different extensions including Google Toolbar, Google Browser Sync, Yahoo Toolbar, Del.icio.us Extension, Facebook Toolbar, AOL Toolbar, Ask.com Toolbar, LinkedIn Browser Toolbar, Netcraft Anti-Phishing Toolbar, and PhishTank SiteChecker.
