Firefox Vietnamese Language Pack Infected With Trojan

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."

Comments

infected with Trojans?

[gEvil (beta)]

So wait...It installs the Greek language pack?

Re:infected with Trojans?

[betterunixthanunix]

I guess I was the only one who thought "infected with trojans" was funny. Especially since many of the condoms I've seen are made in south Asia.

Downside of OSS

[elrous0]

I know this isn't going to be a popular opinion here, but two of the big downsides of open source software to me are the lack of documentation and the lack of quality control. Sure, OSS has THEORETICAL quality control (because anyone can review it), but how often does that REALLY happen? If someone slipped in a virus into some OSS program (especially easy if they distribute it as a binary), how long, if ever, would it be before anyone caught it?

I'm not saying commercial software is perfect in that regard (there have been cases of commerically distributed software containing malware too), but at least there is generally some level of quality control there.

Re:Downside of OSS

[Keyper7]

Open source allows greater quality control than closed source. If Mozilla did not use this potential, it's their fault and not the open source process'. In fact, the problem here is that the quality control used by Mozilla was not open source enough. They only did automatic scanning, something that can be done in compiled binaries, when a simple code-checking (notice that an extension source is not that big) would get the malicious code rather quickly.

Re:Downside of OSS

[peragrin]

right quality control in closed source. bullshite.

How many refurburished ipods have had viruses on them/ How many sb thumb drives with custom controls and drivers have had viruses on them? How may times has MSFT released a service pack only to pull it a day or two later because 50% of the installs would fail horribly?

OSS has a far better track record on quality control. Even better OSS software knows exactly how many times it has been downloaded and releases the exact date at which the infection happened. That is information that is NEVER released by closed source companies.

OSS is far from perfect, but it has a much better track record than closed source software. And when it does fail, everything about the failure is spelled out in details so that particular failure is less likely to happen. Unlike closed companies whose own management don't even know what really happened.

Re:Downside of OSS

[jrumney]

In fact, it is more like less than one month, since the other two months is attributable to the delay in anti-virus vendors recognizing the trojan.

Re:Downside of OSS

[JustinOpinion]

To be fair, this particular sequence of events could have happened to a proprietary product as well. The article explains that an add-on developer uploaded a new version of the language pack. The language pack was automatically scanned for viruses, and found to be clean (since the signature for this particular Trojan wasn't yet known). It appears that this occurred because the developer's computer was infected (i.e.: this was accidental, not intentional, on the part of the contributor).

This isn't too different from a hypothetical employee whose home computer is infected, and who is working from home and emails a module to his boss, who merges it into the final product. If his home computer was infected, and the standard virus scans missed it, then the final product could end up having Trojan code buried inside.

Would the company necessarily have caught the Trojan? Doubtful. They, too, would probably not have done a line-by-line review of each module update that is submitted.

So I'm not convinced this can be pointed to as a failing of the OSS development model per se. The only difference is that the OSS user contributor is perhaps less well-known (less trustworthy?) to the distributors than in a corporate setting. (But, again, this wasn't a problem of trust... this was a contributor machine being infected. And I assure you that corporate developers can and do get their machines infected.)

Nevertheless, this points to a breakdown in Mozilla's auditing practices. They should be very careful with any code they distribute. But these kinds of quality-control breakdowns occur in OSS projects and corporations, too. (One could tangentially argue that at least with OSS, breaches are likely to be publicized, whereas companies will frequently try to suppress information that points out a security breach.)

Re:Downside of OSS

[Paradise Pete]

I'm not saying commercial software is perfect in that regard (there have been cases of commerically distributed software containing malware too), but at least there is generally some level of quality control there.

Creative MP3 players ship with virus
Apple Ships iPods with Windows Virus
Seagate Storage Units Ship with Virus
Sega Dreamcast console game spreads virus
Maxtor USB Hard Drives Ship Virus Infected
Digital photo frames ship with computer virus
Sony Ships Rootkit

Re:Downside of OSS

[ericlondaits]

I guess the point is: "the fact that anyone could check the source code at any time should not replace proper QA, which shouldn't be all that different from the one done on commercial software".

I'm sure that Firefox has quite a bit of QA done to it... but it's usefulness relies too much on extensions, which we don't that many assurances about.

Re:Downside of OSS

[makomk]

Not really. Apparently, the trojan was a single line of code in the HTML help file, not the extension code itself, and I doubt a human would necessarily even think to check there.

Re:Downside of OSS

[Anonymous Coward]

What kind of messed up place do you live where it's recommended you check the trunk for dead bodies?

How do you say "oops" in Vietnamese?

[davidwr]

I'm sure the Mozilla Foundation wants to know.

More Slashdot Sensationalism

[MobyDisk]

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.)

Not really infected

[hweimer]

According to the Mozilla Security Blog the language pack did not contain any malicious code, but only manipulated HTML files:

The Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 contains inserted code to load remote content. This code is the result of a virus infection, but does not contain the virus itself.