Firefox 2 To Have Anti-Phishing Technology

Mitchell Bronze writes "Mozilla's Mike Shaver said in an interview that the upcoming Firefox 2 will have anti-phishing capability using technology that might come from Google." From the article: "With the continued rise in online attacks, security tools have become something Web browser makers can use to try to stand out. Microsoft plans to include features to protect Web surfers against online scams in Internet Explorer 7, due later in 2006. Similar functionality is already in Netscape 8 and Opera 8, both released last year. 'It is another example of the energy that has returned to the browser market,' Shaver said."

Comments

Good on ya

[RyoShin]

Good idea. This way they can make sure that the only thing stolen through FireFox is memory space.

[rimshot]

Re:Good on ya

[BecomingLumberg]

Fox may be a memory hog, but I have not seen it to be out of line in most modern systems. Plus, I get really low useage when i turn off all the extensions i have added to it for customizing.

And I cannot emphasize enough how great it is for my parents. By switching them to Fox and Bird, I have stopped my monthy trip up to remove all new spyware/viruses... now I just go for dinner. That gets an A+ in my book.

Re:Good on ya

[Tx]

Fox may be a memory hog, but I have not seen it to be out of line in most modern systems. Plus, I get really low useage when i turn off all the extensions i have added to it for customizing.

Yeah well, the reply on the support forums to any memory problems is always "must be extensions at fault", and it's almost certainly true. The thing is, ask me to choose between Firefox without extensions and Opera, and there is no contest, Opera wins hands down.

I think the Firefox team should be focussing on ways to ensure that extensions behave. They could do any number of things. Put together a team of people whose job it is to check extensions for obvious flaws, and make a list of "approved" extensions that pass muster. Improve the APIs used by extension developers. Work on tools to help extension developers write robust code. Seems to me more useful than some of the stuff they're working for. That's not to say they haven't done a great job so far, I just think that would be a useful thing to focus on at this point.

Re:Good on ya

[thedbtree]

I also have trouble with Firefox eating up 100-150-200MB after being open for a while. There is a fix to this problem, however. Some of the comments from an older Slashdot article, Firefox Memory Leak is a Feature, will tell you how to fix it.

If I remember correctly, it's something to do with cacheing the pages. Firefox caches something like 25 previous pages you've been to... on each tab.

Maybe this isn't the actual problem -- I'm not a developer -- but it seems to have stopped the "memory leak" issue I have with Firefox 1.5+

Re:Good on ya

[hansonc]

It most likely was not really using 200Mb of memory. It's far more likely that you simply do not know how Linux memory management works and what the figures in 'ps' mean..

It's most likely you just don't know how to read. The phrase "when Windows starts paging" it has nothing to do with 'ps' or Linux memory management.

Re:Good on ya

[Firehed]

Indeed... after *just* opening it, it's at 50MB, just a few kb under what explorer (shell, not browswer!) is using. I fixed the problem around Christmastime with my move to 2GB of ram. It's not overly problematic, just irritating.

Re:Good on ya

[ahaning]

What does Linux memory management have to do with Windows?

This is Slashdot. Linux has everything to do with everything, newbie.

Re:Good on ya

[MauricioC]

Not on each tab. See Ben Goodger's blog for more details:

http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749 .html

Re:Good on ya

[ZB Mowrey]

OK, let's compare apples to apples. Run IE for six months, surfing as normal. At the end of this period, perform a test:

Open 5 or 6 IE windows, then add up the resource usage for IE, plus the resource usage of any and all spyware processes running, plus any plug-ins for IE. Compare this total usage to Firefox memory usage, having the same pages loaded in tabs.

THEN tell me Firefox is a memory hog.

Re:Good on ya

[bunratty]

The "monkeys" at Mozilla are well aware there are memory leaks in Firefox. That's why they developed the leak-gauge tool to help find memory leaks. I'm using the leak tool, and I can see the latest nightly build of Firefox 1.5.x still leaks 1% or more of the DOM Windows it creates, and a leak of that severity could easily cause memory usage to increase by hundreds of megabytes over the course of many days.

No one is denying that there are memory leaks. However, they're not common (occuring on only about 1% of visited pages) and often very hard to reproduce reliably. You can help by using the memory leak tool and reporting good memory leak bugs.

Re:Good on ya

[AME]

dot-dash-dash dot-dot-dot-dot dot-dash dash / dot-dot dot-dot-dot / dash dot-dot-dot-dot dot-dot dot-dot-dot / dash-dash dash-dash-dash dot-dash-dot dot-dot-dot dot dot-dash-dash-dash-dash-dot dot-dot-dot / dot-dash-dot-dot dot-dash dot-dash-dash / dash-dot-dash-dash dash-dash-dash dot-dot-dash / dash dot-dash dot-dash-dot-dot dash-dot-dash / dot-dash dash-dot-dot-dot dash-dash-dash dot-dot-dash dash dot-dot-dash-dash-dot-dot

Re:Good on ya

[bunratty]

No one said memory leaks were caused by a feature. Ben Goodger explained that the obvious increased memory use of Firefox 1.5 was casued by the Back-Forward cache feature. He also stated explictly that all versions of Firefox leak memory -- and of course memory leaks are bugs, not features.

The Back-Forward cache causes immediate increased use of memory, just after loading a few pages. The increased memory due to memory leaks doesn't become apparent until after visiting hundreds of pages and several DOM Windows have leaked. That's why he said that the increased memory use people were complaining about is a feature, not a bug.

I hope the difference between the Back-Forward cache (a feature) and memory leaks (bugs) is now clear. Just because both cause Firefox 1.5 to use more memory does not mean both are bad. The feature is good, and the bugs are bad.

No one is lying, except possibly you. Enjoy Opera, the browser of whiners.

Re:Good on ya

[Mistshadow2k4]

Ok, now do the same comparison with Firefox and Opera. "Better than IE" isn't exactly a high pinnacle in greatness. And besides, they could try to make it the best all-around instead of just settling for "better than IE".

Microsoft anti-phishing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft plans to include features to protect Web surfers against online scams in Internet Explorer 7

Site Blocked: www.google.com has been placed on a list of sites that link to potentially unsafe and / or phishing sites.

An opportunity, a threat...

[Opportunist]

The biggest problem is still the weakest link in the system: Its user.

Vulnerabilities aside, the user is what is responsible for over 90 percent of the infections monitored. This starts with Mails that urge him to open something "really urgently", covers various plugins for Browsers that come filled with spyware (which, in turn, is a perfect door for other malware) and goes to bogus files on various P2P networks that claim to be some crack, hack or other "goodie" to lure the P2P user into starting it.

Now, you can walk the same way that antivirus companies go, you wait for the threat to unfold and grab it at its neck when you find it lurking in the system once your update covers it. That's fine as long as your releases at least match the speed of trojan development, if there is some intersection between the moment you update your anti-trojan signatures and the moment the trojan goes into a new generation.

And that window is closing. Fast. We're now facing trojans with update cycles that make you wonder when and how they create them. Currently, you face about weekly updates of some trojans. For the simple reason that there is no reason to update them more often. It is technically no problem to have them update twice a day. That's already a rate that no antivirus company could match. The AV company first of all needs to get a hold of the trojan, develop reliable signatures, create an update for the sigs and send them towards you.

Currently, AV companies can keep up with development. The trojan writers have enough clueless people without any antivirus protection who click everything and anything and allow every program to do whatever it pleases on the web, so they don't care about "us", those who have av tools and/or know how to keep their computer clean.

As soon as a browser like this hits the market, the race is on. It does no longer matter if you're clueless or an IT-pro, your browser will keep you out of way's harm on everything it knows. So, to be successful, the phishers have to be faster (or develop a new strategy, whichever is easier to do).

I'm not sure if AV companies can win that game if it becomes one of update speeds. A trojan writer has to push one update for one trojan. The AV company has to push a few 100 for about as many malware programs. Not a good position for the AV guys.

My hope is that Firefox will have a different approach to the problem. Self-checking processes (to avoid injections), close scrutiny of its BHOs, etc. I hope they will not try to use AV techniques, but instead concentrate on the entry points for such a program, and try to detect it there.

Re:An opportunity, a threat...

[TykeClone]

I would say that Slammer / Blaster / Code Red / etc infected far more people in a far shorter period of time then any via-user link.

But each of those would have been avoided if the user either kept their machines patched or (at least) kept them behind a firewall.

Re:An opportunity, a threat...

[kandresen]

My fear is similar, but not only that, most of the anti-spyware systems require external lookups which is a privacy risk. If we for every page we look at have to contact a 3rd party we are revealing our internal network structures as well as our use of internet. This is a gold mine for spammers, lawyers, and phishers among others...

One of the things I demand to use this system is the ability to limit how it is used, turn it off, switch it for an alternative system, or uninstall it. The best way it can be implemented is as an pre-installed plugin, making it easy to maintain for those who need need alternatives.

Firefox was always intended to be plugin based, so I hope they stick to that.

Re:An opportunity, a threat...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The biggest problem is still the weakest link in the system: Its user.

I very strongly disagree. There are currently many weaker links.

Vulnerabilities aside, the user is what is responsible for over 90 percent of the infections monitored...

Either I'm misunderstanding your statement or you are misinformed. Most infections do not currently involve human interaction measured both by number and bandwidth consumed.

Currently, you face about weekly updates of some trojans. For the simple reason that there is no reason to update them more often. It is technically no problem to have them update twice a day. That's already a rate that no antivirus company could match. The AV company first of all needs to get a hold of the trojan, develop reliable signatures, create an update for the sigs and send them towards you.

Actually, there are also self-mutating trojans that have been demonstrated that are very good at hiding and there are trojans that interfere with anti-virus.

Currently, AV companies can keep up with development. The trojan writers have enough clueless people without any antivirus protection who click everything and anything and allow every program to do whatever it pleases on the web, so they don't care about "us", those who have av tools and/or know how to keep their computer clean.

First, AV companies are not keeping up and we have seen several "zero-day" infections. More advanced intrusion detection software is becoming more and more responsible for finding new worms, viruses, and trojans on end users systems, a significant amount of time in advance of AV signatures. These systems are not only finding them, but creating and sharing signatures among major ISPs.

Second, your depiction of the average user as people who "click everything and anything and allow every program to do whatever it pleases" is very misleading. I know security experts who have been duped by a well crafted trojan or phishing e-mail and the truth of the matter is, users are making poor choices based upon the fact that they are given poor options. Right now the average user is given the option of "open this file if it is a file or run it if it is a program and let it do anything it wants" or "don't open this file or program." Since users want to view data and install software, eventually they are bound to make the wrong choice.

It will not be until users are given more control, information, and granularity by their tools that they will be given the option of being the weakest link. UI's need to let them know what is data and what is an executable. OS's need to run executables in sandboxes by default and only allow programs to do unusual things (log other program's keystrokes, modify the OS, access hardware directly, modify user files, connect to the internet, access the e-mail address book, access the buddy list, start a new service, modify other programs, etc.) after the user is informed in plain English and given a choice using a properly constructed UI. At this point, users will become the weakest link and not before.

As soon as a browser like this hits the market, the race is on. It does no longer matter if you're clueless or an IT-pro, your browser will keep you out of way's harm on everything it knows. So, to be successful, the phishers have to be faster (or develop a new strategy, whichever is easier to do).

First, the Web is only one vector and not even the most common vector for infection. Second, blacklists will never be able to keep up, although they will help.

I'm not sure if AV companies can win that game if it becomes one of update speeds. A trojan writer has to push one update for one trojan. The AV company has to push a few 100 for about as many malware programs. Not a good position for the AV guys.

Newer intrusion detection systems are they key to mitigating this. Propagation is detectable and if you have a relational model of your network abnormal activity can be flagged, detected

Re:An opportunity, a threat...

[Opportunist]

The plugin system is also one of the ways to get a man in the middle phishing attack working.

This aside, I agree that it should be possible to turn it off. Even though this would essentially kill the security of the system, but I'm firmly against handing over responsibility over my system to someone else, who I'd have to trust implicitly. And what if I don't?

But I'd also recommend delivering it with a default ON setting on the security features. Just to make sure that all those who have no clue what's going on in their computer have it ON!

Re:An opportunity, a threat...

[Opportunist]

Online banking is secure. At the bank's end, at least. I've never ever heard of a successful attack on online banking where the bank was the one who had a spy in its back seat.

The problem with online banking is that you have to trust an untrustworthy client: The one on the user's side. You have no control at all over his machine. Banks don't even know who they're talking to, the trojan or to the user? And they have no way of knowing.

Especially when dealing with man in the middle attacks (the ones going 'round now in the form of various trojans), there is no way for the bank to make sure that the data they're getting is REALLY from the user in front of the machine and not from the trojan inside the machine.

This is the real pain with these services. How do you verify the identity of someone when they are potentially using a tool that's been laced with an identity stealing program?

Re:An opportunity, a threat...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

As soon as the user believes what the mail tells him, he will do ANYTHING you tell him. He will grant you any permit you want, actually telling him what kind of security warnings he'll get even increases your credibility. Because, well, would an attacker tell him that?

This is not true in many cases. For example, if someone can successfully trick a user into thinking an executable is from their bank, they may still become suspicious when the program tries to do certain things. These things might include reading their IM buddy list, sending files via IM, reading their Word files, sending e-mail, modifying their anti-virus program, etc.

Further, that means the author has to trick the user into thinking it is from their bank. That limitation has already eliminated all the trojans disguised as data, spyware in widgets, trojans disguised as games or software from other sources, or spyware functions of existing software.

So yes, some users will do anything their "bank" tells them including granting a program specific access to do all of the things I mentioned above that might make a user suspicious, but not all users will and that leads to faster malware detection times and less propagation. It also leaves a much smaller area for attack that needs to be covered by education.

Right now a perfectly intelligent, informed, and reasonable person might run a program called spacemutant7.exe because they downloaded it somewhere and the authors assured the user it was a really fun game. The user must them make a gamble. Either it is a fun game or it is a trojan that will compromise their system or both. So they run it and hope it is not malware. Sometimes they are right and sometimes they are wrong, but just taking a guess is the best they can do. This is not sufficient. They should be able to confidently run it, knowing that by default it will not be able to read their taxes, mail porno pics of their wife anywhere, turn on their webcam, or modify the core of their OS.

Having a system like this is not perfect and their is still room for social engineering, but that room is greatly decreased and thus the amount of education required to be safe is similarly decreased. It is possible to educate people that their bank will never send them software and they should always verify e-mail from their bank. It is not really possible to educate people to never install or run any software or data on their computer, because that is why people have computers in the first place. Without that functionality, they are not very useful.

I want the user to be the weakest link, and then we can work on fixing users with a small amount of education. The problem is, they are not now the weakest link because they have tools that are deficient.

Here's to hoping...

[ursabear]

I do hope this works well for the average Jane or Joe... I'd like to see less incedences where my mom forwards mails to me (thinking she's either been doing something wrong {like, her bank account is overdrafted, please go to this special web page and fix it}, or has gotten something great for free).

Re:Here's to hoping...

[ursabear]

Incidences...

More appropriate as an extension?

[potluckman]

I'm a big fan of the Fox, but is this really a feature that should be built-in to our svelte (but extensible) browser?

Seems like something that could be its own extension, or if Google is really so involved, integrated into the Google Toolbar for Firefox.

Re:More appropriate as an extension?

[bcattwoo]

I'm a big fan of the Fox, but is this really a feature that should be built-in to our svelte (but extensible) browser?

Yes.

The users most susceptible to phishing are also the ones least likely to seek out and install an extension ("what's that?") to prevent it.

If more savvy users are concerned about bloat perhaps this protection could be optional with the default for it to be turned on.

Re:More appropriate as an extension?

[dyftm]

Actually, the code they are using started off as an extension (Google Safe Browsing). But, they decided that the users that most need protecting are the ones that have no idea what an extension is.

Re:More appropriate as an extension?

[tpgp]

I'm a big fan of the Fox, but is this really a feature that should be built-in to our svelte (but extensible) browser?

TFA:

While Firefox 2 will get a phishing shield, no decision has been made on how it will be incorporated in Firefox, Shaver said

Seems like something that could be its own extension, or if Google is really so involved, integrated into the Google Toolbar for Firefox.

TFA:

"Google, like others who contribute to the project, has contributed code and expertise for us to experiment with," he said. "We haven't committed to a given approach, a given technology or a given partner."

Re:More appropriate as an extension?

[rehannan]

Just make it an extension that's installed by default. Savvy users can easily remove it if they so choose.

Re:More appropriate as an extension?

[Anc]

That's exactly how they are going to do it. It will be an extension.

After all, the technology is a sole contribution of Google and their Safe Browsing extension http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/safebrowsing/.

For more detail regarding the implementation see http://wiki.mozilla.org/Safe_Browsing

Re:More appropriate as an extension?

[Denyer]

Let's have some other basic IE features that are more lightweight (a few lines of code, by comparison) built in, then -- such as Clone Window. As optional features, of course, but it'd help people switching who aren't techy and don't understand why they've "lost" functionality.

Re:More appropriate as an extension?

[SimplexO]

Even better, from the bug report (copy and paste URL to location bar). This is Fritz Schneider, a Google employee speaking:

> Will google continue releasing the extension as part
> of Google Labs, or a product offering?

Great question. We're end-of-lifing the stand-alone extension as it is
released on Labs. Instead, we've integrated this feature into the
Google Toolbar for Firefox and it will go out in the next
release. Then one of two things happens. Case one is this feature (or
something like it) makes it into Firefox, in which case we rip it out
of the Toolbar and do all new development in Moz cvs tree. Case two is
that this feature does not make it into Firefox, in which case we
continue to support it in the Toolbar.

So, to answer your question, we'd very much like active development to
move into Moz cvs tree. But we won't force it.

Smart move

[fak3r]

With the scams changing so rapidly moving detection to a web browser just makes sense. When these things aren't tagged by the users email server (ClamAV is excellent for this) or client, this would be a great 'saftey net' from stopping me...err...grandma from entering her login info for PayPal/eBay/etc. Plus with FF online updating I could see them having a plugin/extention that would have .dat files with the latest Phishing definitions they could download and update to daily; ala virus checkers.

Already there

[denisbergeron]

With Netcraft toolbar http://toolbar.netcraft.com/

Is this a free alternative to Verisign?

[digitaldc]

The various phishing shields use a variety of techniques to protect against the online scams. These include blacklists of known fraudulent Web sites, white lists of good sites and analyses of Web addresses and Web pages. Firefox 2 might be different, since the developers aren't married to those approaches, Shaver said.

Verisign already has this kind of techology, the question is, will Firefox 2 make Verisign obsolete?

Verisign's advice: The best way to avoid becoming a victim of phishing is to never respond to unsolicited emails asking for personal information or directing you to a Web site where you are asked to enter personal information--even if it looks TOTALLY official.

Click OK

[DarkNemesis618]

Has Your Credit Card been stolen?
Enter information and click OK to find out
Name:_________________________________
Billing Address:__________________________________
Credit Card Type:________________
Credit Card Number:_______________________________
Expiration Date:___/___

Now be an idiot and click OK to let me steal your info.

Re:Click OK

[Ford Prefect]

Oh. This sounds really important!

Name:_Ford_Prefect__________
Billing Address:_72_Borchester_Road,_Ambridge,_Borchesters hire,_England___
Credit Card Type:_VISA__________
Credit Card Number:_4242-0563-1337-0584______
Expiration Date:Mar/2008

P.S.: I'm using Safari!

Privacy concerns?

[hcdejong]

Will Firefox adopt an approach that doesn't compromise the user's privacy as much as IE 7 (its solution being to send every URL to Redmond)?

Re:Privacy concerns?

[richwklein]

Google's safe-browsing extension that was landed on the trunk has 2 modes. The standard mode, downloads a blacklist of sites and the sites are looked up locally. The enhanced mode, sends every URL to Google. Mozilla has not committed to either of these modes.

STOP CALLING IT TECHNOLOGY!!!

[LeonGeeste]

That's an extreme stretch of the normal use of the term "technology". They thought of systematic way of warning people about phishing sites by compiling a list of them. Good for you. But computer programs, databases, and browsers have existed for a long time. This isn't a "new technology". It's a computer program. I know, you probably think it's a minor point, but keep in mind that Microsoft considers removing its own damn bugs to be "new technology" (NT).

Thinking up ways to warn people about phishing sites isn't "new technology".

It's sad, really

[mwvdlee]

It's sad, really, that the most important features regarding browsers nowadays all have to do with protecting the user against evil-doers.

Guess I have to change the browser then

[Psionicist]

Seriously, what the FUCK? Googles anti-phising filter (as in google toolbar) is the one who is constantly sending your HTTP requests to Googles servers. There was a slashdot post about this a while ago, but I cannot find it.

Unless you can disable this "feature" or it works completely differently, I'd consider Firefox 2 spyware.

Re:Guess I have to change the browser then

[TrappedByMyself]

You must have missed the giant full page disclaimer during install that describes what the Googlebar's page rank service does. You must also have missed the option on that page that lets you select whether or not you want that feature enabled.

Google tells you exactly what the feature is, and throws the option to enable or disable it in your face, and yet you still whine about it.

Online scams?

[g_adams27]

> Microsoft plans to include features to protect Web surfers
> against online scams in Internet Explorer 7

Wouldn't it have been easier just to not program the online scams into Internet Explorer 7 in the first place? I just don't understand Microsoft's new security procedures at all!

Damnit

[Anonymous Coward]

Time for a fork.

Seriously, I'll tell you the only anti-phishing technology we need: our damn heads, with a side of common sense.

I don't want my browser to have stupid coddling features like this that will just get in the way of a decent, savvy surfer. That's the problem with popularity - it leads to diluting the quality. I'd rather have a *good* browser only used by 3% of the people out there. Hell, the mere minority status might even make it *better* - now that Firefox is popular, more and more sites are finding ways of advertising specifically to it.

If Firefox 2 does have this, then it better be easy to fully disable, otherwise I'm definitely not upgrading.

Re:Damnit

[Senzei]

Welcome to sharing your toys with the world. Hopefully you can understand that not everyone is clued in, and that the people at mozilla or at least smart enough to know that not everyone needs a digital drool cloth.

Re:Damnit

[Spliffster]

not sure if this is also in seamonkey (aka the mozilla suite), i'd recommend to check this.

Good

[PenguinBoyDave]

I have been forced to test IE 7 for my company, and the fact that Firefox 2 will have this will give us no reason to use IE 7.

Re:Firefox not for geeks anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect you're posting a bit facetiously, but...

Will Firefox not pop up a warning, saying something akin to "Hey, you can go ahead and visit this site if you like, but we think it might be a bit fishy"? Doesn't seem that bad.

I would assume that Firefox won't prevent you from accessing a certain site, since I can't imagine the Mozilla Foundation wanting to coordinate universal white-/black-lists.

What about cookie theft prevention?

[Eccles]

Couldn't the browser also include cookie theft prevention? Recently I had an online game spoiled when a scripter stole my cookie and thus accessed my account, via user-modifiable code on the game's site. While I suppose some times cookie redirection might be legitimate, I'd think it rare enough that some sort of configurable blocker would handle those few cases while making cookies safer in others.

Open source a problem here?

[LeDopore]

Won't it be easier to defeat this anti-phishing scheme since Firefox is open source?

(Seriously. If not, please post why not and educate me.)

Re:Open source a problem here?

[Haeleth]

Won't it be easier to defeat this anti-phishing scheme since Firefox is open source?
(Seriously. If not, please post why not and educate me.)

No, it won't, for the simple reason that obscurity does not provide security. Whether the source code is available or not, it's always possible for a smart hacker to figure out how a program works. So whenever you're doing anything related to security, you assume that the bad guy knows every last detail about your code does what it does. And you design your code so that that doesn't matter.

For example, if you're blocking phishing attempts by having a database of known phishing sites (which is how the Netcraft toolbar works, IIRC), then it doesn't really help the phishers to know the details of exactly how your browser connects to the database and looks up their URL in it. Because even though they know what's happening, there isn't actually anything they can do to stop it happening.

I suppose there are schemes that could be defeated by seeing the source. For example, a naive scheme that tried to identify phishing sites by running a fixed series of tests on them (check if site is in Russia but claims to be American bank, check URL to see if it contains dodgy characters, etc) would be slightly weaker in open source code because the tests would be visible for all to see. But such a scheme would be basically useless anyway - not because it's open source, but because it would be a fundamentally weak technique.

Anti-phishing should be done at the website level

[scolby]

My bank, for example, recently introduced a feature called a site key for log ins to its online services. After entering your initial user id, it brings you to a screen that displays a user-chosen image and title. The rule is that if you recognize the image and the title, you enter your password. If you don't recognize one or both, you don't.
Companies should be responsible for protecting their users, and this struck me as a rather good way of doing that. Granted, if someone really wanted to, they could set up a site just to scarf your user id, log in with that id to snag your site key, then create another site with the site key included to gank your password - but that's a lot of work.

anti-phishing == no passwords

[hackstraw]

When are people going to realize that passwords are not secure. Ever. Even if you pick a "good" password and change it every 13 minutes like a good boy, they are still not secure.

Why? Its too easy to snag the password from social engineering or some other means or even by accident.

I walked out of the bank disgusted when I went to get a private lock box, and it did not have a key given to me, and the bank had the other key like before. No, now they wanted me to remember a password, and enter it into a computer to unlock my box.

OK. I made that up, because even banks are not stupid enough to do this, but they open up the account online to any bozo that has a password.

My bank recently initiated an "anti-phishing" technology where it uses cookies stored on my computer and if the bank does not recognize my computer it displays a picture that I set up in the past with a caption that I selected for the picture, and then its supposed to be OK to put in my password now because the site is providing evidence that the bank and not some guy from China or Russia is asking for my password.

However, I carry many bank cards in my wallet, and they work excellent at stores and ATMs, but they don't fit into any holes into my computer. The bank has already given me an excellent token that is much more difficult to replicate than a few random characters on a keyboard, but they refuse to use it.

OK, I have to go and change my passwords now, its that time of year....

Re:anti-phishing == no passwords

[INeedAttention.com]

Interesting. I was about to reply and "correct" you, saying that American Express Blue already offers the protection of using your physical card as a second security factor. In fact, I even have the smart card reader that American Express was giving out for free (I wasn't even a cardholder). However, it seems they only offer this service in the middle east now. Link anyway, just for fun: American Express smart card reader

Re:anti-phishing == no passwords

[filterban]

However, I carry many bank cards in my wallet, and they work excellent at stores and ATMs, but they don't fit into any holes into my computer. The bank has already given me an excellent token that is much more difficult to replicate than a few random characters on a keyboard, but they refuse to use it. I think you're missing the point. Your bank cards are just a magnetic stripe with a string of data on it (account number, exp date, and maybe some other misc info). A phishing site could just as easily steal that string of data as it could steal your login and password. It doesn't matter if it's your debit card, password, or biometric info - a phishing site could still easily steal your information. Really, the best method for fighting phishing is user education and global law enforcement. If the URL window does not reference your bank's domain, report it, and hopefully we can get them shut down.

Re:anti-phishing == no passwords

[hackstraw]

Really, the best method for fighting phishing is user education and global law enforcement.

OK, remind me. Money has been around how long?

Fighting "phishing", user education, and global law enforcement is very, very new and nonexistent at this time.

I'm arguing that passwords are causal, and not correlational here.

I've never been "phished" for the key to my house, nobody but someone I already trust to some degree deserves that, but when online banks _refuse_ to put their login page on a SSL secured site, and it trivial to make any website with a one character typo that also does not have a SSL login page, something is very wrong here. Most anyone will give up their "online key" (aka password) to someone calling them or in a clever email, or typosquatted site. They will think twice about handing over their bank card and/or cash.

Only, very recently did my bank introduce something where they show me something that validates them as "OK" for online activity, but they require IDs, and tons of other stuff do do anything at their brick and mortar location.

I've heard terms like "universal precautions", but I do not see them for online activity. Computers are very logical, but humans do not seem to apply logic when it comes to computers.

I think I'm going to start lying to people when they ask me what I do. They think that because I work with computers that I know about stuff like email viruses, spyware, phishing, SPAM, Windows, and all of this other crap.

The blank stares I get when I say that I don't participate in these things, and when I suggest that these are mostly features of computer systems that I don't use baffles them.

Re:Now IE fans...

[aitan]

Insightful?

The summary already states that this kind of antiphishing is already available in Nestcape 8, Opera and several toolbars and extensions.
At least the grand parent said 'their' meaning that only fools will believe that this is original to MS.

Re:Now IE fans...

[Tweekster]

What the hell are you babbling about? RSS icon? um IE adopted it to be standardized, and that was seen as a GOOD thing you twit.

Re:It already is an extension...

[rainman_bc]

It basically checks websites you visit against its database and tells you if they are considered dangerous or what have you.

So it reports my surfing to google's database? Thanks but no thanks. I've never fallen pray to phishing attacks, and don't want a feature like that logging all the pr0n sites I visit. Wait, the only pr0n site I need is google images now anyway haha!

Why should we trust google? They are looking out for their shareholder, not the end user.

Coloured URLs and URLs displayed always

[Midnight Thunder]

Two things I would like to see:
  - colouring of URLs in the address bar, or something else, that would allow the novice user to easily identify the user name element of a URL. I have already see URLs of the form (http excluded): ://www.citibank.com@42426842fdsafadsfasd.com/fhiud sahiufds?sdafdsfsdf

  - even in a window that has no tool bar or status bar, there should always be an status bar that displays the page's address.

Re:Coloured URLs and URLs displayed always

[porneL]

Opera solves it by displaying "You're about to go to address containing username" and displays which one is username and which is server name.

Re:Anti-phishing should be done at the website lev

[Xugumad]

Just makes it harder - is there anything stopping me from making a site that takes in your user ID, logs into the real site with that ID, pulls out the image and title, and shows it to you?

The real answer. IMHO, is using public keys for authorisation, as you're then never sending anything that can be used again. Man in the middle attacks are still possible if you can persuade the user to accept the wrong server certificate, but it's as good as it gets, IMHO.

The user's key doesn't even have to be signed - just have the site remember the key you used first, much in the same way you'd set up a password.

Mozilla's Current Documentation

[Elder Young]

Here is a some design documentation for the safe browsing add-on: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Safe_Browsing:_Design_Docu mentation

Here is the Bugzilla bug for turning on the feature. Remember that you have to copy and paste the link into the address bar because Bugzilla blocks slashdot. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32929 2

From what I understand, the idea is to make the feature an extension that is installed by default, kind of like the talkback error reporting tool. In "normal mode", the extension will make decisions on phishing sites based on a blacklist file that is downloaded from an update server, and every address that you visit will NOT be sent to Google or Mozilla for verification. If the user goes to turn on Enhanced Mode, a warning dialog will pop up telling them that information WILL be sent to Google or someone else, for the purposes of finding new sites to add to the blacklist files and online blacklist database. I don't think that enhanced mode will be turned on by default, but there are still a lot of things that are undecided.

Phishing in Firefox / Mozilla - a long lived issue

[DrXym]

The need for anti-phishing in mozilla was identified 4 years ago. The problem was that it was raised as bugs in bugzilla and issues like that attract comments like flies to dogshit. I saw anti-phishing bugs with hundreds and hundreds of CCs and comments. No one could agree to anything and coded solutions were ignored for pointless debate. I hope this time around, they just implement SOMETHING. If it sucks, it's still better than nothing at all.

Anyway, I'd argue that Thunderbird needs it much more than Firefox. Most phishing starts with the inbox. Links in email that use dodgy hex encoding, raw IPs, IPv6, point to domains that differ than the anchor text etc. should be highlighted. And popular targets such as banks, ebay, Paypal, Amazon etc. should be explicitly identified. I'd also like Thunderbird to add a phishing filter rule so that I can automatically toss the 20+ phishing emails I get a day straight in the junk folder without accidentally training the bayesian filter to kill genuine emails from Amazon, PayPal etc.