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Firefox Vietnamese Language Pack Infected With Trojan

Posted by timothy on from the when-childhood-goes-wrong dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Wired.com is reporting that the Firefox browser has been unknowingly distributing a trojan with the Firefox Vietnamese language pack. Over 16,000 downloads of the pack occurred since being infected. This highlights a risk on relying on user-submitted Firefox extensions, or a lack of peer-review of the extensions, many of which receive frequent upgrades."

1 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. More Slashdot Sensationalism by MobyDisk · · Score: 5, Informative
    The article says:

    ...That Trojan inserted a banner-ad displaying script into any html file on his system, which included the help files for the language pack.

    That meant that anyone installing the language pack would have malicious ad displaying code inside their browser -- which could be used for other exploits.
    So the language pack did not have a Trojan. I don't think the language packs even have executable code. The language packs had help files with banner ads in them. That's not even close to what the headline says. But I guess "Vietnamese help files may contain ads" doesn't sound as scary.

    (I guess this means Slashdot sensationalism isn't restricted to anti-Microsoft articles.)