Slashdot Mirror
Mozilla UI Spoofing Vulnerability
Short Circuit writes "Secunia has issued a security advisory for Mozilla and Firefox. Apparently, remote web sites can spoof the user interface using XUL. (See the Firefox proof of concept.) Of course, that won't stop me from using Firefox."
I've lost faith in Secunia, they seem to love pointing out security holes in open-source products. So I just ignore them now.
so am I really seeing slashdot, or is someone trying to spoof me, while at the same time ironically warning me about said Firefox spoofs?
According to the spoof demostration page, this has been known for five years(!) but the bug filed has been marked "confidential". You'd think that the Mozilla team could do better than security through obscurity - that is usually a reserved tactic for "the other team"....
Spine World
except it has been a known issue since 1999...
No, because it's using Chrome, so the fake window will have the same theme as the user is using, and if coded cleverly enough, even an experienced user wouldn't be able to easily tell the difference - e.g. Menus will operate in the same way etc.
Bear in mind that this spoof only looks convincing if you haven't changed your Firefox toolbar at all, ie. you haven't switched to smaller icons or added/removed/moved buttons.
It also fails to appear properly on the Macintosh.
If someone wanted to make some kind of exploit with this, they'd want to target a specific platform and Firefox revision. (eg. 0.9 on Windows) Since Firefox is in constant development, it could well change between revisions and render these spoofs obsolete.
I don't really see this as a Firefox vulnerability. Use any browser without a popup blocker, and you'll see a lot of popup ads pretending to be legitimate OS windows and dialogs. This is really just a variation of that.
The real problem here is not so much XUL, but Javascript!
Why does the browser even allow Javascript to create popup windows without toolbars, menu bars and status bars? This has to be one of the most annoying features of any web browser, I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would think up or need such a feature.
Without this Javascript, you couldn't turn the real menubars and toolbars off, and the problem would be much less severe since although you'd have a second set of interface controls within the browser window, the real status bar would be at the bottom, and the real menubar would be at the top.
Firefox already has a way to block JS from doing this and using several other of its most annoying features, and indeed I personally have these limits switched on already. Put about:config in the address bar, and change these entires to the following values (or look up how to make a user.js file on Google):
dom.disable_window_move_resize = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.close = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.directories = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.location = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.minimizable = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.personalbar = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.scrollbars = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.status = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar = true
dom.disable_window_open_feature.toolbar = true
dom.disable_window_status_change = true
Now try the example given in the summary again.
And not just for the bug itself (that probably will be fixed quite rapidly). There are two issues behind this.
(1).The problem was known 4 years ago, but it was marked confidential. I'm not familiar with BugZilla,so I didn't even know there could be a "confidential" bug. This is the antithesis of Open Source philosophy. This is pure security-through-obscurity, in pure M$ style. If the bug wasn't "confidential",I'm sure we should have seen this fixed years ago.
I just hope most of the other open source/free software projects I rely on every day (Linux,KDE,Mplayer,Kile,Thunderbird,Nicotine and so on...) don't follow such a moron habit.
(2)How can the browser load XUL code and use it without warning? This is not a bug: this looks more like IE-like flawed design. Correct design shouldn't even *read* any data of this kind, let alone running it and let it deface the browser itself!
The Mozilla family of browsers/mail clients is still a crew of wonderful programs,and I'm proud of using them. But they will rapidly become IE-like crap, if they continue this way.
-- Patent no.123456: A way to personalize
And from the linked page, a gem that we shouldn't overlook:
"if you don't have Firefox (you should get it!)"
i am not even sure if this shoud be called bug
there is nothing it is not doing like it should
it may be stupid to allow javascript to hide the toolbars etc.
maybe it would be wise to disable those features in the next firefox version per default
it is easy to change right now...
and i don't see why this is worse than IE permitting execution of code on your machine
stop supporting microsoft with pirating their software!!!!!
Oh, and there's no excuse for "security through obscurity", especially when you've spent the past five years ridiculing the evil empire for it and thumping your chest singing the praises of being open and honest about the same thing. I don't care if this particular issue is interpreted as a bug, a vuln, a feature or anything else. The Mozilla folks kept this jewel mum for five years as far as I can tell. You know what? That means that XUL is probably flawed in some fundamental way and they know it. And if that's not the case, the fact that they hid it sure makes it seem that way.
I suspect we're going to start seeing many more of these as Mozilla gains a foothold. Perhaps all our retarded zealot fanboys will being the understand that actual vulnerabilities aside (which affect all code), plain user stupidity and the fundamental problems of the browser as an application platform make up for a large percentage of the perceived problems with IE. Heck, the other day I rain into a page that wanted me to install some XPI malware.
Maybe we're not so superior after all when people actually use what we do. Reality intrudes on the best laid plans, I guess.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.locati
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.menuba
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.minimi
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.resiza
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.scroll
user_pref("dom.disable_window_open_feature.status
This makes all pop-ups have a full navigation bar, location bar, status bar, and forces them to be resizable and scrollable.
It may look uglier than plain-window pop-ups, but it does keep you in full control of your browser.
With these options set, the spoof pages look obviously like what they are: a fake browser within a real browser.
Use link to get the pretty green colors back.
Of course, that won't stop me from using Firefox.
What kind of blind OSS zealotry is this?
You know, I never advocate using Mozilla/Firefox due to lack of vulnerabilities; because deep down inside, I know there are a ton of vulnerabilities just waiting to be found. This is a problem for any reasonably complex software. Two reasons to use Mozilla/Firefox:
1. Feature-wise, it completely blows away IE
2. Standards compliant, which will help make the web a better place for all browsers
Also, it runs on many OS's, but that's not a good reason for everyone.
Currently, most of the malware/viruses/etc are for IE. But I have seen sites that try to get you to install Mozilla extensions that could be potentially malicious. With Mozilla's new-found popularity, it's only a matter of time before Mozilla gets attention from the malware writers. Get ready for it.
#!/
You should really read the Mozilla vuln. list. While they only allow things that have been reported, *already fixed*, and *gone for 2 versions already*, it does provide a pretty scare look at Mozilla's "security", or lack there of. While I will be the first to admit this model of secrecy has worked in the past, it doesn't look like it will in the future. First, a lot of people are moving to Mozilla and Firefox, making it a viable target (I've already seen several instances xpi spyware/trojans ["please install me to make your clock run accurately"] being used in place of traditional ActiveX), and second, security reporting has been changing. In the past Mozilla security bugs where reported directly to Mozilla, where they could be kept secret as long as it took Mozilla to fix them - I've only seen a few rare cases of someone actually taking their grievances about Mozilla's slow bug fixing public (like the 1 line Javascript exploit for taking down every Mozilla window and tab at once, which took a year to fix, finally being done when the vulnerability was reposted to a public board, which prompted it to be fixed silently shortly after 1.7 came out). With Mozilla and Firefox "mainstream" browsers now, real security experts are starting to look at them, and they don't play Mozilla's game. They want credit for their discovery, so they don't want to have it shuffled under the rug while Mozilla pretends it never existed. This means publicly announcing exploits, which not only forces Mozilla to radically change how quickly they respond to security bugs, but also forces them to publicly inform users that they should upgrade to the latest build (before of course they just kept fixes secret and let everyone who doesn't download a 12MB build everyday browse with arbitrary code execution vulnerabilities, since saving their own face was more important). The fact that Mozilla vulnerabilities are going to start getting announced within days or hours of them being patched means you're going to start getting exactly what you get in IE - hackers take the bug, make a working exploit, and deploy it a week or month later against the 90% of people who didn't download Mozilla's daily bugfix (perhaps a bigger problem then IE, since Mozilla demands you download the whole 12MB thing, instead of just a little 100KB patch file). Remember Blaster - easy, 56k friendly made available more then a month before it hit. Now try "easy, 12MB patch made available on a weekly basis" and see how few people are keeping ahead of the hackers.
That didn't prevent the statusbar hack, but it made everything else *really* obvious.
Have a look at about:config. There's a lot of useful stuff in there.