Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
typodupeerror delete not in
  • Preferences

Book Reviews

Recent reviews from Slashdot readers:

Submitting a review for consideration is easy; please first read Slashdot's book review guidelines. Updated: 2008114 by samzenpus

Comments: 70 +-   Fixes Released (and More Promised) For "Clickjacking" Exploits on Thursday October 09 2008, @04:04PM

Posted by timothy on Thursday October 09 2008, @04:04PM
from the no-death-penalty-for-online-jerks dept.
security
msie
mozilla
internet
An anonymous reader writes "As discussed previously on Slashdot, concern has been raised over a class of 'clickjacking' vulnerabilities which affect all major Web browsers. These exploits allow an attacker to place invisible or seemingly legit objects on a Web page that perform undesired actions when a user clicks on them. In recent developments, 'Guya' posted a scary proof-of-concept that hijacks Adobe Flash Player to spy on users with a webcam and/or microphone. In response, Adobe released an advisory with a temporary workaround, and stated that a future Player update will address the exploit. This prompted the original disclosers of the vulnerabilities to post a summary of the exploits. Additionally, Giorgio Maone, creator of the popular NoScript extension for Firefox and other Gecko-based browsers, released version 1.8.2.1 of NoScript, which adds 'ClearClick,' a feature that intercepts clicks made on invisible or otherwise obscured elements on a page. Although issues remain, there seems to be progress in addressing these security problems."

Related Stories

Submission: Info, Fixes Released for "Clickjacking" Ex by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Fixes Released (and More Promised) For "Clickjacking" Exploits 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by snl2587 (1177409)

      Well, an example is the "Get Add-on" link on the NoScript website: clicking it causes an iframed link from Mozilla's add-on page to be "clicked" instead.

      Clickjacking's new in terminology only.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        But that's the user clicking on a visible item, simply embedded in the page. It's misleading, sure! But it's not the same as having a user click anywhere and it hitting an invisible item that does something completely unrelated to whatever's displayed.

        • Re:Has... (Score:4, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 09 2008, @04:31PM (#25320875)

          I was describing this article to my boss, and here is what he said to me verbatim. My Emp. added.

          So, should I be afraid of my web browser clickjacking me off of my normally visited websites to some spyware?

      • Except it doesn't at all. Mouse over the link and you can clearly see in your status bar that it goes to Mozilla's site. Clickjacking my ass.

        • Pleaseread [hackademix.net].

          • Except that it doesn't come up with that box at all, and I'm running the latest version of NoScript. Looks like they fixed it.
            • No, the noscript site is on your whitelist by default (along with googlesyndication.com so the developer can collect ad revenue off his site). The demo on his blog was an example of what would happen if you removed noscript.net from your whitelist and went to his site with the blocker enabled.

        • Nice job looking at the page source, but you've really got to look at the javascript.

          Note this bit (this is only a part; see the source for the rest):
          document.getElementById("amo-install").innerHTML +=
          '<iframe id="amo-installer" width="1" height="1" style="visibility: hidden; filter: alpha(opacity=0)" scrolling="no"></iframe>';

          Yep. Looks like this is exactly what I was talking about.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Mashiki (184564)

      Anyone actually seen a POC of clickjacking? I know I haven't...

      Yes. I've run across it on GCW, MSNBC and Wowhead through 3rdparty advertisers. It's already in the wild, the only thing that stopped it was noscript.

    • Well, there's a POC linked in TFA. I tried it. It looked like it was going to work but NoScript warned me about it. Pretty cool.

      NoScript is my friend.

    • Click the proof-of-concept link in the article summary.
  • I've solved this problem by removing my mouse from the computer. Now I never click anything malicious! Or anything at all... Its all wonderfully frustrating.

  • This stuff is why I use NoScript and haven't even installed the Flash plugin addon to Firefox. If I REALLY want to view something in flash and I trust the content provider, I'll fire up IETab.

    Not perfect, but a far sight safer than Joe Q. User.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by plover (150551) *
      I have the Flash plugin, but I also run FlashBlock [mozdev.org]. It's awesome. No crappy flashy anything unless I actually want it, and then it's only a few mouseclicks away. That plus NoScript [noscript.net] meant it took me about half a dozen clicks before I had both the permission and the ability to run the clickjacking demo. I feel pretty safe with Firefox.

      • That would be great if flashblock itself wasn't susceptible to clickjacking...

    • Why not just use flashblock for firefox instead of firing up IE? You can enable/disable individual flash objects on the fly with flashblock.

      In IE you have to let everything load, which is less secure. If the page is full of flash adverts it'll also consume more CPU cycles.

  • Help (Score:5, Funny)

    by conner_bw (120497) on Thursday October 09 2008, @04:24PM (#25320757) Homepage Journal

    Dear internet, i'm trying to give this article a "thumbs up" but now my browser is filming me nude? This isn't what I had in mind when I signed up for web 2.0.

    • It's a .0 release. Haven't you learned anything from all the linux threads here?

      • Your mother must be so proud

        Yes, she is. Some people aren't prudes and understand humor when they see it.

        Of course, me being nude on Slashdot not offending you in the first place kind of makes me question your understanding of reality.

  • Like I need yet another NoScript update this week.

    • Normally I wouldn't mind being told to update every 24 hours, but the way NoScript does it is completely fucking retarded.
      What's the use of Firefox having a "show more information" button in the addon manager when all it displays is an URL to an ad-filled page with a 2 line changelog? And to rub it in, the info box isn't a real textarea so you can't just copy and paste the link.

  • ..even have a facility for the webcam and mic anyways?

    • Re: (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      People use it here for American Sign Language work. They sign into the webpage, it turns on the cam, they sign it up, and it's stored on the server for their instructor or collaborator to view/grade/whatever.

    • Because all technological advancement is driven by adult media?

    • my friend used it in his interactive media class to simulate the vision of dogs. you run the flash application and it filters the cam feed to only display the visual spectrum dogs are capable of seeing.

      i don't think there's anything inherently wrong with giving flash access to webcam/mic. it creates opportunities for a lot of useful web apps. however, i do think that flash browser plugins need to warn users and have them confirm that they actually want to turn on their webcam/mic.

    • Let me get this straight: You recommend:

      i.e. for banking.

      and you expect us to trust you with security advice? Please!

      • Re: IE for banking - I know some banking sites weren't compatible with FF for a loooong time. I'm still not sure if BofA's site is. It can be frustrating.

    • While the "different browser" idea would work, turning off JS would be marginal to harmful. This is a straight HTML/CSS exploit, and, actually, turning off JS could stop preventive framebusting scripts from running.

    • See, this is why I think NoScript and CookieSafe (CS Lite) should be standard functionality in Firefox. In fact, they already have the functionality, they just need the friendly UI so normal people can actually use it.

      But Mozilla won't do it, because it would piss off the advertisers who use JavaScript and cookies to surreptitiously track people. They might be an open source project, but they don't have the users' best interests at heart.

  • Not only am I an exhibitionist, I'm also unbelievably ugly! You won't be 'clickjacking' to my warped, drooling countenance!

    • Re: (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Goddamnit, mom! I thought I told you not to post on the same websites as me? And don't think I haven't seen you on adultfriendfinder either.

  • I was under the impression that Flash runs with full privileges and can basically do anything if you have the plugin installed. Is this not the case?

    • The plugin runs with full privileges.

      The scripts (in Actionscript, a version of ECMAscript (nee Javascript)) run in a sandbox.

  • NoScript (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HTH NE1 (675604) on Thursday October 09 2008, @04:57PM (#25321179)

    Now if only NoScript, when I choose (for example) "Temporarily allow doubleclick.net", granted that allowance only on the page I'm viewing and its descendants and not in every open tab in every window to every site their scripts are on!

    • Re:NoScript (Score:4, Informative)

      by kesuki (321456) on Thursday October 09 2008, @06:39PM (#25322329) Journal

      apparently, feature suggestions should be posted to this forum http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=826005 [mozillazine.org]

      'temporarily allow site in tab' and 'temporarily allow all in tab' are features i'd suggest, but i'm too lazy to sign up for a forum and post there.

      being specific to a single tab would be nice, it might add to the size of the engine, but again it would make annoying broken ad supported sites like pogo that require 26 separate sites to be 'allow' to properly load a webgame... no, i don't play pogo, but i disabled noscript from one of my parents computers so she could use pogo. I checked to see if i could just add to the white list, but that basically defeated the point of a white list, so it was disabled.

      on windows it's no big deal, she uses ie, and i use firefox, but on their linux system, which she rarely uses, except when there are issues with the other computer... well, it has to stay set so she can play pogo on it if needed.

        • they work globally across all tabs though. what if i want doubleclick okayed on one tab, but not another? it's one thing to 'have to' allow one one website in one tab to play a free online game, and quite another to make every news site i'm surfing suddenly show ads, because of one site.

  • Are they really saying this newly-uncovered, ultra-hyped, horrible, end-of-the-internet, cross-browser, gotta-fix-the-world-but-it's-SO-hard, threat... ... was INVISIBLE BUTTONS?

    • Re:Are they saying this end-of-the-internet threat (Score:4, Informative)

      by mr_mischief (456295) on Thursday October 09 2008, @06:20PM (#25322119) Journal

      Any form of invisible link, invisible button, link or button in an iframe, getURL() call in Flash, or JavaScript handler for any normally non-clickable item that makes you go somewhere, yeah.

    • Yeah, which is lame because I've been using those for years. They're actually really handy in certain situations. ...And that's for legitimate web app work, not spamtastic garbage. In fact if the changes they make are sweeping enough it may break some of my old code... yay.

  • It's always kind of creeped me out that Flash even gives applets access to the microphone and webcam, and I never enable those capabilities in the program.

    Yes, I understand the point of it, I just think it's creepy.

    • It's always kind of creeped me out that Flash even gives applets access to the microphone

      Definitely creepy. One time I visited a page with a Flash-based advertisement from (apparently) a French company. When my mouse cursor inadvertently moved over the Flash applet, some kind of contact was made with the company. This French guy was screaming into his microphone "'ello?? 'ELLOO??". And he obviously saw through my cam because he continued: "Bonjour, sire! Whas arr yous eatingue?" just when I was shoving a sandwhich in my pie-hole.

  • In the case of iframes abuse, wouldn't it make sense for browsers to refuse to allow iframes to show pages which include some sort of "no_remote_display" tag? So if your page has a form which could potentially be abused, add the tag and browsers which recognise it will only show the page in it's entirety, and not as part of another page or from another domain?

    I realise that this may well be far too simplistic and people will probably point out a dozen reasons why it won't work and would break all sorts of t

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by FLEB (312391)

      This attack makes it possible for third parties to trick you into performing actions on third-party sites, by overlaying them invisibly on something you think you want to click. An attacker could overlay a seemingly innocuous game, for instance, with an administrative panel from a common website. The settings panel would be invisible (zero or low alpha), but still would receive mouse clicks. When the "game" asks you to click two seemingly random points, you're actually clicking the "Delete my account" check

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by FLEB (312391)

        When the "game" asks you to click two seemingly random points,

        s/random/arbitrary/

        • begin pragma grammar nazy

          insightful? more an epic fail. you know, adjectives, those thing that give more meaning to a word: seemingly random is not random, and seemingly arbitrary is not the correct substitution in that context
Search
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest. -- Alexandre Dumas, fils

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.