Firefox Was the Most Attacked & Exploited Browser At Pwn2own 2014

darthcamaro writes "Though IE, Chrome and Safari were all attacked and all were exploited, no single web browser was exploited at this year's Pwn2own hacking challenge as Mozilla Firefox. A fully patched version of Firefox was exploited four different times by attackers, each revealing new zero-day vulnerabilities in the open-source web browser. When asked why Mozilla was attacked so much this year, Sid Stamm, senior engineering manager of security and privacy said, 'Pwn2Own offers very large financial incentives to researchers to expose vulnerabilities, and that may have contributed in part to the researchers' decision to wait until now to share their work and help protect Firefox users.' The Pwn2own event paid researchers $50,000 for each Firefox vulnerability. Mozilla now pays researcher only $3,000 per vulnerability."

Comments

Yeah, but it's fast and it's not bloated

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, wait...

Re:Yeah, but it's fast and it's not bloated

[lexman098]

It can actually be pretty fast if tweaked a bit.

Re:Yeah, but it's fast and it's not bloated

[Jane Q. Public]

"Yeah, but it's fast and it's not bloated"

On my Mac, the Chrome app is 6 times the size of Firefox, and far slower. Just sayin'.

I keep them updated. I don't use Chrome except when I have to because it's too slow (with NO bookmarks or plugins) versus my Firefox (with a shitload of bookmarks and lots of plugins).

I use these things in my daily work. Or rather, I use Firefox in my daily work because Chrome and Safari are so slow. But I have to check compatibility with them so I keep them around and do use them sometimes.

That's on my Mac. YMMV on your computer or on Windows.

check the fixes over the following hours for detai

[raymorris]

Check the bugzilla and the security update the next day for full details on Firefox.

Conditions of instability:

[Futurepower(R)]

Firefox is unstable when many windows and tabs are open, even when using NoScript, Adblock, and Ghostery, as mentioned above.

Many crashes do not start the Crash Reporter.

See for yourself. Go to this URL:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/products/Firefox/versions/27.0#duration=14
(Mozilla does not allow links from Slashdot.)
Those are NOT ALL the crashes! Those are just the crashes that don't also crash the Crash Reporter.

The earlier version, 26.0 is crashy, also:
https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/home/products/Firefox/versions/26.0

Re:Conditions of instability:

[Dagger2]

I have ~350 tabs in my Nightly install and it's not unstable at all. Heck, I have 1400 tabs open in my main Firefox 3.6 install, and managed to get it to 2400 recently, and it's not crashy either. Admittedly it's a bit janky due to the garbage collector (which has improved massively since 3.6), but what do you expect with 2400 tabs open? Firefox does not appear to be inherently crashy with many tabs.

If you're seeing crashes, please post some of your own crash reports so we can see if there's any obvious common cause in them. The overall crashes per ADI reports don't tell us much about how crashy Firefox is compared to other software, without also having similar reports from other software to compare with.

Re:Conditions of instability:

[Waccoon]

I have huge issues with Firefox, mostly with regards to memory management. However, stability is not one of them. I have maybe one or two crashes a year, and that's with a minimal, carefully culled selection of extensions.

The big disappointment is AdBlock Plus. This extension is the source of most slowdowns, and after the v27 update, AdBlock slows Firefox down to a crawl, and sucks up so much memory that regular restarts are needed to keep the browser from going berserk due to running out of memory.

I do know that AdBlock merely aggravates Firefox's memory management issues, though, rather than causing them. On its own, Firefox will still choke itself to death over time, and it appears to be related to its JavaScript engine.

Re:Conditions of instability:

[oji-sama]

Tree Style Tab plugin (for example), the first thing I install after Firefox (or second). "You are about to close 332 tabs. Are you sure you want to continue?". Admittedly not all of those are actually loaded as I haven't actually clicked all of them during this instance of Firefox.

Yes.

[Futurepower(R)]

Yes. Someone makes this comment every time, for the last 9 years, since version 1.0.

Most people don't open a lot of windows and tabs at the same time. The people who do that are usually those doing serious research. For example, what to do about the changes in Google Voice coming in May, 2014?

The problem is much worse when many windows and tabs are open under the Windows OS and Windows is hibernated several times.

Re:Yes.

[vux984]

Most people don't open a lot of windows and tabs at the same time.

Define many. I routiney have 10+ windows with 20+ tabs in most of them, and another 10+ windows with 1 or 2 tabs.

I do software development; not primarily web based, but it comes up both in web apps and web services, so I'm regularly loading and debugging sites that are rendering pretty broken stuff too.

I honestly can't recall the last time FF crashed on me for any reason.

The problem is much worse when many windows and tabs are open under the Windows OS and Windows is hibernated several times.

I haven't rebooted my Mac in ages -- last time I installed an update that needed a reboot. A few months easy.

My home office win 7 destkop gets rebooted around once a month for windows updates. Sleep/hibernate/wakeups the rest of the time.

I'm not disputing your experience. But I do wonder whether your crashes are tied to a particular plugin, or are linked to some other characteristic of your system. We use FF at the office as well, on dozens of computers -- stability is NOT problem there as well. Don't know what to tell you.

Re:Firefox is the most unstable program in common

[Anonymous Coward]

Just saying, I use Firefox as my primary browser. It last crashed.....I can't remember when. Is it maybe possible there's something wrong with your computer?

I use it because IE...though I don't have anything specifically against the new versions, I just don't like it. Chrome, beyond not trusting it being a google product (I assume it logs every keystroke, it wouldn't be out of character for them, though I will grant they probably don't log password fields, but all others...), is there honestly a more bloated browser out there? Firefox right now has 19 tabs open for me, using 950 megs of RAM (a bunch of those tabs have plugins running such as PDF viewers or video viewers). Chrome, 3 tabs, using a grand total of a bit over 500 megs of RAM (hard to say exactly how much since I don't want to pull out a calculator and add together the I believe 8 different processes), and all just displaying simple web pages.

Re:Firefox is the most unstable program in common

[ahabswhale]

That's odd, I keep literally dozens of tabs open in it all the time and haven't had it crash on me for as long as I can remember.

Re: Firefox is the most unstable program in common

[John Bokma]

Funny that you mention Linux. Firefox crashes about twice a week here, most often with multimedia content. Linux and 8GB of memory. And yes, I am one of those that keeps 50+ tabs open.

Re:Firefox is the most unstable program in common

[mark_osmd]

I think the 'crashy' people are installing huge numbers of questionable plugins. I have good luck with Firefox but only install a few well selected plugins (noscript, better privacy, adblock, flash block, littlefox, and self destructing cookies). Because many of those plugins block crud like flash ads I get even better stability.

No lowrights mode (not surprised)

[Billly Gates]

Both Chrome and IE (yes slashdotters I did say IE) support lowrights mode.

This means it has no access to the file system at all, no access to processes or threads and %appdata is its prison ... assuming you are on Windows 7 or greater on Windows. XP users will get hacked regardless of browser because the OS does not support kernel level sandboxing.

I left Firefox for IE 9 in 2011 after it won rewards on tomshardware.com. Then switched to Chrome. Firefox like Netscape before it is a sad shell of its former self. I do admit the later firefox releases are much more lenient on ram usage and have improved drastically.

But I have an older Phenom II x6. Nice 6 core with virtualization support for VMWare .. but it is 2.6 ghz and is showing its age at only 2.6 ghz. My machine needs multi processing/threading apps to run close to modern and they provide greater security. One tab does not interfere with another and can be assigned for each core.

To prevent my fan from going high and causing high usage both IE 10+ and Chrome utilize my system fine and still display pages as fast as those reading this on an icore5 or later. But Firefox puts +20 tabs on one cpu with no lowrights mode and as you can image when firebug is on it slows down all the tabs and it is a security risk.

Like netscape it was the lack of funding that killed it agaisn't IE 6 onslaught. I wonder if the same is true? I used Netscape 4.7 before succumbing to IE 6 and then Firefox 1.5 to IE 9 and later Chrome today.

Re:No lowrights mode (not surprised)

[cbhacking]

Vista or greater; Mandatory Integrity Control was introduced with NT 6.0, not 6.1 (better known as Win7). IE7 on Vista was the first browser to use the Low Integrity Level sandbox.

By default, Low IL actually does allow reading much of the file system and registry. It just can't do anything to any of it.

For what it's worth, you can *kind of* get the same benefit on XP by running a browser as a very-low-rights user. That causes no end of problems for some use cases (like downloading files), though.

Re:No lowrights mode (not surprised)

[cbhacking]

Not actually true (you don't really know that much about MIC on Windows, do you?) Standard user processes, including non-sandboxed browsers, run at Medium IL. Admin processes, including services, run at High IL. Medium IL is just as incapable of attaching to a High IL process as Low is to Medium.

Re:No lowrights mode (not surprised)

[benjymouse]

You're an idiot as standard users still have access to threads, processes, and the file system. This means you can attach a rogue process or malware to an admin one which happens to run as a service. It can then be executed with full admin privileges.

Nope. A standard user (which even includes admins who have not elevated through UAC prompt yet) can only attach to processes running under *the same* account as itself, and then only to a process/thread within the same *session* as itself.

In Windows, all services are launched in a separate session from the shell - meaning that direct attachment is not possible from a user shell to a service - even if they are running as the same user.

Unlike *nix'es, Windows uses proper tokens. What a process is permitted to do is not limited by a user account - rather each process has its own fine-grained token. By default a process inherits the token from the process that spawned it - but it can be further limited. When you log in, the shell process is created with a token which has all administrator privileges stripped from it and which runs with medium integrity level. So even if you are an administrator you will still get a standard user token. Upon login another token was also created - one which has high integrity level and has not been stripped of administrative privileges you may hold.

When you launch a process where the manifest demands elevated rights, Windows will issue the UAC prompt. If you accept then you get to run the process with your "super" token. This prompt is running with "high" integrity level (and by default even on a separate desktop) to prevent malicious processes already running as you from "remote controlling" the prompt at click the ok button for you.

It is important to note that unlike on Unix where you elevate to "root" with sudo - and thus receive privileges far beyond what is called for - Windows UAC prompt *can not* grant you privileges you did not already hold (well - if *another* user authenticates at the prompt you can "borrow" that users privileges).

It is worth noting that while all browsers were successfully attacked, the "Unicorn" class challenge Windows 8.1 x64/IE11/EMET was *not* exploited - even though it would have netted the attacker a cool $150,000.

Re:No lowrights mode (not surprised)

[benjymouse]

W3C was something a committee did which was academic. Only Netscape and MS specific CSS and HTML mattered and websites needed to include specific workarounds for one or the other etc. Man, people forget how dark the web was 10 years ago.

This. And everyone seems to have forgotten how Netscape pushed the awful JSSS as an alternative to CSS. Microsoft actually pushed CSS at the time.

At the time, the best browser actually won. It was the neglect by MS in the years following that was/became the big problem, one for which MS has rightfully earned a lot of scorn. MS never wanted the web to evolve too fast as it could undermine the very lucrative desktop business.

But at the time of Netscape/MS rivaly, it was actually Netscape who tried to foist abominations like JSSS and the "layer" tag upon us.

Re:Not so many options

[Billly Gates]

I left firefox after 4.0 debuncle. Yes it was the first release to really support HTML 5 but it was freaking HORRIBLE. Bad UI, sloooow, and on older hardware it was unusable. IE 9 won rewards on tomshardware.com which was released march 2011. I held my nose and gave it a try. It supported hardware acceleration, html5 (I admit it was more limited at the time), and was great on my 6 core system as it has per process tab. Since 2001 it ran circles on gecko web engines??!

Many slashdotters said ewww no thanks based on IE 6 memories.

I then played with Chrome. Yes it is spyware somewhat but it too has important features and has less hardware acceleration but it is more secure and frankly a much better browser than Firefox.

My father got hacked with Firefox. It is a shitty browser with no lowrights mode. It is frome the XP era and has no concept of %appdate and uses the filesystem and has access rights to some processes and threads. Bad security wise but that is what XP era software did.

Chrome and IE 9+ have separate code bases for this with XP vs Windows 7 and greater with sandbox support. Many here use Comodo Dragon which is based off of Chrome but has no privacy issues. However, be warned it based off the previous version of Chromium with some security holes.

Switch my friend!

Until Firefox goes to a processing model and supports lowrights mode I will not go back. This may change hopefully as Firefox is improving with performance and ram requirements since 2011 but on a 6 core system it is stupid not to multitask!

Re:Moved to opera

[Pseudonym Authority]

The new Opera is just a butchered Chrome with less features. Please don't use crappy knock-offs made by sellouts.

Re:Firefox is the most unstable program in common

[ahabswhale]

I would recommend noscript. Firefox does have a glaring flaw in that all the tabs run in the same process so if one gets wonky, it's game over for everything. It's probably flash that's killing you. I use noscript which blocks everything (like flash) that I don't explicitly want running and it makes Firefox very stable. As a side benefit, it makes browsing much safer. I use Chrome a lot too but when I'm going to any questionable sites, I use firefox just because of noscript.

Re:Firefox is the most unstable program in common

[LordLimecat]

Flash runs in a separate process, and has for quite a while.

I'd be more concerned . . .

[Ruedii]

I'd be more concerned about the severity of the exploit than the number of them.

Software freedom > "fast" and "not bloated"

[jbn-o]

At least Firefox can be altered to become what you want it to be because Firefox respect's a users software freedom. Far more important than vagaries like "fast" and "not bloated" is how a program treats its users. Proprietary browsers leave users no opportunity for improving the program. Thus security issues in proprietary programs go unfixed and are exploited for years. This, in turn, allows others to invade people's computers and leaves users helpless. This is exactly what happened with Apple's iTunes for over 3 years. I would not be surprised to learn that software proprietors including Microsoft, Google, and Apple are doing similar things with proprietary web browser programs as well.

So while I like trustworthy programs like other computer users, I know that I can't ascertain the trustworthiness of proprietary programs like Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome. The extent to which any of them are built from software that respects my software freedom is irrelevant because proprietary programs and their updates are essentially black boxes. I can't possibly inspect or fix all of the software I use, but I can put myself in a position where I stand to benefit from the improvements a lot of programmers make by exclusively running software that respects my freedom to run, inspect, share, and modify—free software—freedoms I value in their own right.