Spyware for Firefox Coming This Year? 630
EvilCowzGoMoo writes "One of the main reasons for the Firefox browser's successful seizure of market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the desire to escape the inundation of PC-slowing spyware. However, spyware experts indicate that with its increased popularity, Firefox itself will become a target for spyware creators." From the article: "Basically, if you use Firefox today, you're not susceptible to any spyware, other than what you download when you're on Kazaa...The spyware writers target mostly Explorer users because that's the most fertile feeding ground for piranha-like (spyware) attacks. They'll watch as Firefox becomes mainstream, they'll see opportunity there and start targeting them."
IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:5, Insightful)
For Firefox, though, it'll take social engineering. The place to look for the spyware threats is in the brand new extension you WANT to install. Most Firefox users have at least one extension, and many have a dozen. How do you know what each of those is doing behind your back? Most people don't bother to scan the code, and while some may do so and report problems publicly, will you find out about them? A firewall won't even help you in this situation since you've probably given Firefox free access to port 80 (plus 443, etc).
Mozilla should probably create some sort of permission system for extensions. Can it connect to a remote server? Can it write to disk?
Duh. (Score:2, Insightful)
...and.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm. That's probably exactly how it'll happen.
cool (Score:1, Insightful)
Open Source Disadvantage (Score:1, Insightful)
I doubt it ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Overall, no matter how you slice it, Firefox is more secure and is designed from the ground up to prevent the "fertile feeding ground" that IE offers Spyware writers.
So no, you aren't going to see the same rampant irresponsibility that you see with IE, and the threat is a tempest in a teapot.
Of course, nothing is going to protect your computer from your own stupidity when opening executables, etc... that's all on the user whether or not they authorize code to run or not.
Easy to see this coming (Score:1, Insightful)
Solution: don't enable ActiveX (duh)
What people don't understand is this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Fiddlesticks. Popularity is only part of it. (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue isn't really how many people are using it. That certainly does figure into it, but the very basic design philosophy of IE allows spyware to propogate easily.
Firefox has far better controls on what programs can be installed and can't be. Also, the very multi-platform nature of the code makes it harder to write an app that will work well.
I'm not worried. On the IE side, the only people who can fix the code are microsoft drones, and they won't do it. On the firefox side, the people who fix the code are the people who use it, namely us.
Planet-Geek [planet-geek.com]The popularity argument again (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:...and.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Security is only as good as the person keeping watch. Sure, having all the bells and whistles is grand, but in the end human interaction (or lack thereof) can bring the biggest ship down.
Re:Malicious XPI's exist already (Score:4, Insightful)
"Bring it on"
How's Firefox supposed to get even more resistant to exploits if hackers aren't sitting there trying the exploit the heck out of it?
Trial by fire. There's a reason it started out as Phoenix.
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the same argument about Macs and viruses (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:5, Insightful)
For you and I, I'd say that exploits are the issue...but in my experience, most average users don't get a malware infestation via browser exploits (mainly because when you and I see the words Gator or Newnet, we say hell no). They simply click "yes" when asked if they'd like to install a piece of software. I don't know if the mentality is "yeah I want more functionality" or "yeah yeah, just show me the damn webpage!". One way or the other (antecdotally), most of the users whom I deal with tend to install the malware themselves. FWIW, these users tend to be on the low end of the learning curve.
It would be interesting to see a permission based system for this...maybe even registering approved plugins with a crypto signature/hash.
Why more than just two browsers is a good thing. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the market is indeed split into two major parts, this is actually a bad thing, because it gives you only two huge targets. That makes it easier and less expensive to create viruses, or take over computers for monetary purposes.
What we need is several browsers that each have a significant part of the market. Not just IE and Firefox/Gecko based browsers, but also Opera and KHTML based browsers. Maybe there would be room for even more as well.
It is good that an alternative browser is growing rapidly, but monoculture or duoculture makes life easier for virus makers. With four browsers, it would take four times the effort to get as much "bang for your buck" for virus authors looking to make money by infecting people.
Vested interest in keeping you scared (Score:2, Insightful)
A Grand Day For Firefox (Score:3, Insightful)
So when Firefox becomes worth the effort, the folks in Redmond will really have to worry. In this game, nothing flags success like being the target of abuse! Tens of millions of Firefox users might just mean ten of millions of people considering something other than Windows. And that affects the bottom line for Microsoft. Hmmm, anyone heard of any OpenOffice exploits yet?
Re:IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't that just reinventing Java?
Re:The record keeps skipping. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
I doubt that this is true. Apache has a greater market share than IIS. There are more exploits and worms for IIS than there are for Apache.
You may be safe if you are small. You are safer if your design takes security into account up front, and that design remains intact through implementation.
Windows is insecure by design. Therefore, there are windows exploits. Unix, Linux, and MacOS X were designed with multi-user security in mind from the beginning; they are more secure than Windows.
Re:IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean like the way Microsoft handles signed vs. unsigned ActiveX?
He hit the nail on the head (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this part sums up the beauty of Firefox, and the reason why I don't think this is any sort of cause for alarm:
There is a whole community of brilliant frickin' people out there who have taken a personal interest in making sure Mozilla products are secure & as bug-free as possible. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that they might look at Firefox as "their baby."
More importantly, some of these individuals are well-versed with the shadier aspects of software...so I predict Firefox security holes being patched as quickly as they're found.
Not only that, but I don't see many Firefox users (especially not those that have used it since its early days) taking spyware/adware lightly...turning the other cheek or throwing hands up in frustration don't seem to be personality traits of bastards like us
Re:I doubt it ... (Score:3, Insightful)
But getting users to actually run the patch is a problem, wether it be IE, Windows, Firefox, Fedora, or Solaris.
The problem is most users dont patch unless they have a specific problem that warrents a patch. I think that more things need to nag when patches are needed. A little icon in firefox is not going to make my grandma install the latest patch for x-expolit. How this can be accomplished is proably against the views of the OSS community, but software needs to check it self(call home), and report vividly to the user that it needs updating.
Re:YES. (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox doesn't rely on security through obscurity. It relies on security through process and architectural improvements, the same way anything should. Nobody has made any claims of perfection, simple of a superior process and architecture coupled with a much faster response time. So far, that has proven to be true.
same old story... (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't doubt snippets written to exploit Firefox's vulnerabilities will pop up, eventually in larger numbers. But that does not make the above argumentation any more valid, nor any less stupid. And we've been trhough argumentations about that, so I'll just skip that one.
Re:"Expert"? (Score:3, Insightful)
At the same time, to be fair, his current position _is_ researching spyware - it is likely that he has a good understanding of it.
What kind of source would be an "independent third party" that would be reliable? Clearly, Firefox and anti-virus/anti-spyware are out - where does that leave us when looking for an authority on the subject of spyware in Firefox? That isn't a rhetoric question; I'm not sure where I'd go if I wanted to back up my own observations with an authoritative source.
Re:IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:4, Insightful)
The loophole here is that people will only see those reviews once, just before they install the extension. A year goes by and everybody hits the software update button which just goes ahead and installs the new stuff. Instant malware.
I'm not saying this will happen, but it could. Hopefully the developers figure out a defence for this before it does, such as popping up tabs with the lastest reviews of the extensions Firefox wants to upgrade.
Re:It's possible (Score:2, Insightful)
Since mostlikely your site is a geek related site, sure there will be more firefox and mozilla users, geeks are more likely to use them. We need to see stats from non-technical sites cnn.com, expedia.com, etc... to see the real trend.
The real problem... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry, but it is. The direction is toward more whiz-bang on pages. Flash. Shockwave. More stuff that makes people say "ooh...pretty."
And it all runs off of plugins. So users get used to seeing popups for "hey, this needs a plugin to run. Click here to get it" or warning messages "hey, this site is trying to run scripts. You OK with that?" And they get numb to it.
Sure, a more secure and harder-to-exploit-without-explicit-consent browser is a good thing. But until people stop writing pages that REQUIRE you to run code locally to view them, there will be exploits. The users are always the weak point--this is why e-mail viruses continue to exist.
And until page authors start toning down the whiz-bang stuff, users will continue to "get used to" these warnings and either turn them off because they're annoying, or simply click "OK" without reading them.
Re:Duh. (Score:1, Insightful)
plus if things got really bad, you could run your browser in a chroot jail. can anything even similar be done in windows?
Re:IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a bug in the original IE authenticode interface (fixed in XP SP2) that allows a site to repeatedly present the user with the download dialogue.
The real problem here is that the idiot who invented Javascript thought that the creator of the page should gain complete control over the user's Web browser. Its an interactive TV model, the content provider controls the user experience completely. Netscape did this because they were paid by the big media companies to do so. Microsoft made a big mistake in following suit.
Re:Explain yourself... (Score:5, Insightful)
That and OSS has coders that aren't being hamstrung by marketing weasels. If something is awesome, but would take too long to develop ("cost too much"), an OSS developer can still do it if he wants.
What guarantee do we have that the people looking at the code are even qualified to review? What insurance do we have against their work if it goes wrong?
None, same as closed source developers. No company will pay you, either voluntarily or in a lawsuit, for bugs in their code; neither will OSS. Read your EULAs.
Who's accountable?
Nobody, same as closed source developers. Both have reputations to uphold, but commercial developers only care about their reputation as a means to profit. If they can make money without bothering to have a good reputation, they will.
One advantage is that OSS developers have a reputation they would like to uphold. If they write crappy/insecure code, people stop using their code. Closed source developers will often say "well, it works, and it sells, so.." and let the developer stay on, making more bugs.
Re:Malicious XPI's exist already (Score:4, Insightful)
Why can't a browser simply be a browser anymore?
All it needs to do is render html, optionally show pictures, and supply widgets for forms.
That is it.
Re:IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think so, I think even a relatively small, but noticable and increasing, percentage of web share would be sufficent for spyware manufacturers to attack firefox.
For one, they want to ensure their product (and I use the term loosely) is on as many computers as possible. For two if they could successfully make firefox a vehicle for their crap for the average user, then one of the major incentives for switching to firefox would be lessened, and they'd maybe keep as many users as possible on IE where it's so much easier to infect them.
l4h
Re:IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:...and.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Read some of the other posts on this thread, they're all going on about how FF can't be affected because it was 'designed from the ground up to be more secure', and 'there is inbuilt protection from viruses', and 'the developers would release a patch way quicker than microsoft'.
The advert telling people to get FF claimed it was more secure. So when people (deliberatly)install their IM smiley-banner-weather-forecast-search-toolbar extension for FF, and start seeing popup adverts... they'll say 'but you told me FF was more secure and this couldn't happen' and think 'FF is just as bad as IE'.
The answer - get some mature, sensible, reasoned information out there, and not the F/OSS fanboy rubbish spouted off by those karma whores who havn't even read the article.
Re:Why more than just two browsers is a good thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, Linux would most definitely have exploits galore. We've already seen outright kernel exploits and holes in the 2.6 series of kernels. I don't know about you, but I don't even remember there being a Windows security flaw that used the kernel. Go to LinuxSecurity [linuxsecurity.com] and witness the stream of security advisories that are announced for each Linux distro, much more than the Windows patches we get on the second Tuesday of each month. These advisories very rarely make Slashdot front page news.
And no, it's not an unfair comparison to put a Linux distro and a Windows install on the same level. Just because the Linux distro ships with more software doesn't matter. If someone buys Mandrake, uses the software it came with, and then gets exploited, that is an exploit of the Mandrake software distribution that they bought with their distro.
People like to compare a single kernel to the entire Windows operating system, and in the next breath argue about how Linux is "just a kernel." So it's all the more amusing when some people argue that there's a difference between a Linux distro and Windows. There's not.
On a *nix based system, wiping out the home directory would usually fix you right up.
Bollocks. The UNIX "filesystem standard" fragments things way more than Windows does. With Windows, you know a few places to look for a malicious program to get rid of it--\Windows, \Windows\System, \Program Files, and so on. There aren't a lot of places. Linux, on the other hand? Where do you look?
Believe me, malicious software writers would find a way you haven't thought of to screw people. That's what they do.
Re:More secure? Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anecdotally, I don't have security issues with my Windows boxes when I use Firefox. When my wife uses IE, I find myself removing spyware. For me, in my experience, Firefox is more secure. You may write that off as a niche user in a niche market, but fuck you anyways, AC.
As far as other people, STFW - there's plenty of other people reviewing the ways and means which make Firefox less exploitable than IE. Type 'Firefox IE more secure' into Google and see which way the order comes out on your links. I know you won't, since you're just trolling, but maybe somebody reading this will and learn something.
Back under the bridge with you, then.
Re:Duh. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The popularity argument again (Score:2, Insightful)
The majority of people simply use the browser as is and do not go out of there way to change the settings. IE can be made somewhat secure by going out of your way to lock it down, but this is beyond most peoples ability.
Security is an after thought in IE. Security is the first thought in Firefox. That is the difference.
It's a different problem (Score:3, Insightful)
So the consequences of an IE exploit are typically far worse than the consequences of a Firefox exploit. This is just how it works with modular applications instead of system-level everything.
Of course, if you run ActiveX within Firefox, all bets are off...
Re:Malicious XPI's exist already (Score:2, Insightful)
You could also download something from a P2P network that replaced your Firefox shortcut with one to a batch file that contained the command "echo y | del c:\*
Re:Malicious XPI's exist already (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Malicious XPI's exist already (Score:4, Insightful)
I find it's the cumulative effects of lots of XPI extensions that really make browsing with FireFox enjoyable.
I use adblock, the Sage RSS reader, Spellbound spell checker, GMail notifier and FoxyTunes.
If all it did was what you suggest, may as well go back to Mosaic. I really enjoy the customisations I can do to get the browser I want.
I also develop web sites for a living. The reason we have ActiveX, Java, Flash, Javascript, DHTML it because it needs to do more than render HTML.
The fact is that for some things successful and useful website use this stuff, and need to use this stuff to give a good user experience. They are, of course, also horribly abused no doubt about it. Trade off for a more useful web. If you don't think it's worth it, you can run FireFox without any plugins, or a text only browser.
I'll be off enjoying the web, and being careful what I install.
Re:Bring it On (Score:1, Insightful)
Muslim terrorists are not fighting the Great Satan because of Levis jeans and MTV and American imperialism. They are fighting to establish a worldwide caliphate under Islamic law, through coercive force, using asymmetrical tactics that target civilians with the intent of scaring them into compliance.
i.e., a bully. And it works, too, at least on silly liberals with Pollyanna views of the world and who take terrorists at their word when they claim that it's American imperialism that makes them strap bombs to retarded kids.
Re:Malicious XPI's exist already (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Love Firefox, but can dump IE (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd disagree, I am not saying that Mozilla support 100% perfectly the w3c's standards, but then they are constantly working towards supporting as much of it as reasonably possible (some of the more esoteric areas of the CSS specification will probably never be fully supported). Microsoft OTOH had pretty much just left IE to rot until relatively recently (infact their main motivation for modernising it seems to be the rise of FireFox), but even when IE7 is released it will only be made available to either >Longhorn or >XP users (I don't recall which).
I strongly disagree, for the end user propriatary extensions to the HTML/XHTML specifications are not a good thing, it means they're restricted to viewing a site on a particular browser which is unnecessarily taking choice away from them.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say...
I assume you're referring about agreeing to work off a single specification telling them what markup and such to support... this is the goal of the w3c [w3c.org] is, and they've got many specifications which browsers are supposed to aim to follow. The Mozilla team seem to be trying to follow these specifications but Microsoft seem content to just do their own thing and/or only do a half-arsed implementation of certain specifications.
IE vs Firefox = sam as Windows vs. Linux argument (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Spy vs Spy (Score:1, Insightful)
Granted, I don't personally know of a Windows port of it, but that doesn't mean anything...
Re:IE and Firefox have different problems (Score:2, Insightful)
I install Firefox and Thunderbird on other people's computers via CD. I install a collection of extensions from the same CD. Not all of them are from updates.mozilla.org. The update process seems to quite happily go to these other sites.
That was exactly what I was thinking. What happens if the author of some popular extension, say Adblock, gets an offer he can't refuse from the "Russian spam mob"? I know what I would do if I was offered the choice of losing my knees or gaining a wad of cash.
Doesn't that happen with Quicken already? :-)
Seriously though, coupling this loophole with some level of social engineering could be a problem. I kind of like the idea of the update process opening up the authoritative extension source (preferably some semi-trusted third party like updates.mozilla.org) in a tab, and adding a button to the bottom of the page that you have to click to accept the update. Of course this still wouldn't help the clicky-clicky types.
Re:Bring it On (Score:1, Insightful)
That's why they can defend certain Islamic societies that brutalize women and employ extreme conservative governments, all the while "standing up" for women's rights and liberalism in America. The contradiction in values always confused me until I realized why they did it. It's another way to "go against the grain" and feel enlightened.
Doesn't apply to everybody, but I'd say a good portion.
Re:Bring it On (Score:4, Insightful)
It is not our culture, but rather our FOREIGN POLICY.
Our government propping up leaders and overthrowing elected governments and things like that, ALL OVER THE WORLD, is what has caused Terrorism to flourish.
Ask ourselves these simple questions: Why Did Osama Bin Laden switch sides? What caused him to stop working FOR the United States and start working Against it? Where did Iraq get all the weapons that they are now shooting at our sons and daughters? Why are people starving in Cuba but Castro is doing fine? Why did we really oust the Taliban from Afghanistan? Do people in other cultures really *want* democracy forced on them?
Generally attacks come to places that have American interests or places that help American interests. But also, there is one thing people seem to overlook - How come no one hates Canada (besides Canadians...)? How come no one burns Swiss flags in protest?
The United States government has a long history of meddling and pushing. Both Republican and Democrat. We have pushed with Military Might. We have meddled with covert actions. We have coerced with financial influence. That is why we are targets for Terrorism.
They don't "hate our freedom and liberty" - they hate our government. And they see the American people who continue to support the governments policies, and who pay tax dollars to fund those policies - as enemy combattants.
The Levis and MTV are just icing on the cake. Just one more reason for them to hate us.
People in the USA are just as guilty of religious fundamentalism, and just as guilty of killing in the name of religion. More people have been killed in the name of Christianity than any other single cause. People resent that over time...
Re:Spy vs Spy (Score:3, Insightful)