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JavaScript Malware Open The Door to the Intranet
An anonymous reader writes "C|Net is reporting that JavaScript malware is opening the door for hackers to attack internal networks. During the Black Hat Briefings conference Jeremiah Grossman (CTO, WhiteHat Security) '...will be showing off how to get the internal IP address, how to scan internal networks, how to fingerprint and how to enter DSL routers ... As we're attacking the intranet using the browser, we're taking complete control over the browser.' According the the article, the presence of cross-site scripting vulnerabilities (XSS) dramatically increase the possible damage that can be caused. The issue also not which-browser-is-more-secure, as all major browsers are equally at risk. Grossman says 'The users really are at the mercy of the Web sites they visit. Users could turn off JavaScript, which really isn't a solution because so many Web sites rely on it.'"
The problem is not necessiarly the web browsers (and most don't even use Firefox let alone have even heard of that that extension). The problem is the websites that don't properly take steps to protect against XSS (e.g. HTMLencode user input).
3 .html
Most recently we saw this problem in Netscape's portal.
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2006-07-26-n7
Developers need to start thinking not only about how to solve the particular business problem but also about how their code could be potentially abused by attackers and take active steps to mitigate that risk.