Slashdot Mirror
Nasty Data-Stealing Bug Haunts Internet Explorer 8
Trailrunner7 writes "There's an unpatched vulnerability in Internet Explorer 8 that enables simple data-stealing attacks by Web-based attackers and could lead to an attacker hijacking a user's authenticated session on a third-party site. The flaw, which a researcher said may have been known since 2008, lies in the way IE8 handles CSS. The vulnerability can be exploited through an attack scenario known as cross-domain theft, and researcher Chris Evans originally brought the problem to light in a blog post in December. At the time, all of the major browsers were vulnerable to the attack, but since then, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera all have implemented a simple defense mechanism. The upshot of this is that if a victim has visited a given Web site, authenticated himself to the site, and then visits a site controlled by an attacker, the attacker would have the ability to hijack the user's session and extract supposedly confidential data. This attack works on the latest, fully patched release of IE8."
People still use MSIE?
Eh, more like 15, but who's counting?
Steve Hawking goes into a little more depth in his new book and Greene actually says String theory supports it too.
We're on our way to a Unified Theory all thanks to IE and Microsoft.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
It's a strange thing. It seems the only reason IE exists it to repeated punch microsofts reputation in the face. I'm surprised one executive hasn't gotten so fed up and fired the "IE team" or replaced them with monkeys. I watch Channel 9 and there are some seriously smart people working at this company and yet this one program has done more to harm the company's reputation like no other.
did you forget to take your meds?
Don't let the W3Schools stats confuse you. Those are for a small subset of the comparatively small American market, and thus aren't indicative of the global trends.
Just keep fiddling while Rome burns, Nero.
#DeleteChrome
What year are you from? IE hasn't been used for Windows Update since... well, hell, it was optional even in Windows XP. Going to the site in Vista (almost 4 years old now) or higher just redirects you to the control panel.
It's not 1998 anymore.
Comment of the year
if you're using internet explorer, you deserve every bug you get. If you're in one of those companies that mandates IE or something, company data theft is their fault and their loss. If you're reading slashdot, chances are you know that entering your personal data on one of those computers is probably a bad idea because besides internet explorer, they also more than likely have company monitoring software installed.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
actually its only 52% and dropping rapidly. If nothing else, at least MS is having to make a modern standards complaint browser. I for one, don't think it'll be enough to gain back much lost market share, but at least it'll make it easier on us web developers. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer#Market_adoption_and_usage_share
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
Data theft is easy to detect, just look for missing data. These sound like data spying/eavesdropping attacks, that is, where the attacker is able to monitor all your data without your knowledge. Nowadays it seems that "theft" has come to mean "something I don't like".