Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Zero-Day Code Execution Hoax?
Akon writes, "eWeek is running a follow-up story on the claim by two hackers that Firefox's implementation of JavaScript is critically flawed and could result in code-execution attacks. Turns out this is a possible hoax that was overblown for laughs." Mozilla's engineers say the risk is limited to a denial-of-service issue. From the article: "'As part of our talk we mentioned that there was a previously known Firefox vulnerability that could result in a stack overflow ending up in remote code execution. However, the code we presented did not in fact do this, and I personally have not gotten it to result in code execution, nor do I know of anyone who has... I have not succeeded in making this code do anything more than cause a crash and eat up system resources, and I certainly haven't used it to take over anyone else's computer and execute arbitrary code,' Spiegelmock said." Spiegelmock also stated that the claim that there were 30 other undisclosed exploits was made solely by his co-presenter, Andrew Wbeelsoi.
No change there then.
Actually not, it's trademark violation, and it's only if you release it under the name of "firefox". Call me the day when I can fork Internet Explorer and release my patched version as "Intarweb Implorer" without getting sued though.
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
It was painfully obvious to anyone at the presentation that the whole thing was a joke. It was the best presentation I saw at Toorcon just for the hilarity factor. If they were talking at any other convention I'd go see them again.
Most of the press got the joke, laughed, and ignored it. It was some tool at CNET's fault for compromising his journalistic integrity and reporting satire as fact that caused the problem.
FireFox has no exploits. All exploits are actually in IceWeasel, to avoid legal action from Mozilla.
In other news, Microsoft has said thet their version of Genuine Internet Explorer has no bugs, and any bugs, must be due to a bad download, or user tampering. As such, all user installs of Internet Explorer will be renamed to "Meshed-Screen Interpolated E-reader" (MSIE for short), and will subsequently be subject to licensing fees.
Have you read my journal today?
If the CNET folks didn't get it, the panel should've made sure they did.
Any prank like this NOT done on 1 April needs to end with "and for those of you who left your sense of humor at home, the preceeding presentation was 100% pure entertainment and any resemblance to reality was purely to tweak your nose. Please stay for the next panel on novel approaches to perpetual motion. Thank you."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Never believe anything without a second source
Anyone want to reiterate what he said so we can know that we should believe him?
This guy's the limit!