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February 24, 2005 9:00 PM PST
Firefox fix plugs security holes
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The open-source project released Firefox 1.0.1 to fix, among other bugs, a vulnerability in the Internationalized Domain Names (IDN), a standard for handling special character sets in domain names that lets companies register domain names that appear to be the same in different languages.
The IDN vulnerability allowed an attacker to create a fake Web site on a non-Microsoft browser in order to pull off a phishing scam. A spoofed link would seem to be a legitimate URL in the address bar of affected browsers. But instead of taking the victim to the trusted site, the link would lead to a phony Web site with a domain rendered as the same address under the IDN process.
The updated browser will display the IDN Punycode in the address bar, preventing URL spoofing. Punycode is the encoding of Unicode strings into the limited character set supported by the Domain Name System and IDN.
"Regular security updates are essential for maintaining a safe browsing experience for our users," Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for the Mozilla Foundation, said in a statement.
Phishing attacks, which try to fool consumers into handing over sensitive information by creating legitimate-looking Web sites and e-mail messages, have become a central security concern recently. While vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer have been the focus of much of the concern, other browsers also have had their fair share of flaws.
The update is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux at Mozilla.org.
Firefox recently surpassed 25 million downloads, achieving that mark in 100 days. Mozilla, which released the free 1.0 program in November, said an average of 250,000 people download Firefox every day and more than half a million Web sites feature Firefox promotions.
Mozilla, an open-source software foundation formed by Netscape, was spun off from Time Warner in 2003.
See more CNET content tagged:
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Feel free to continue use of IExplorer... I know I sleep much better since I stopped doing so.
of hiding it for months. i wish MS and Apple would do the same.
at least Apple has fewer problems.
anyone else noticed this?
A) Two websites sharing nearly identical domain names - one being legit and the other not so legit
and...
B) Two versions of a song - one in CDA on a cd bought at Walmart and the nearly identical version in MP3 downloaded from the net
I see no differance at all. Though, B is looked at as criminal and A is looked at as nothing more than a nuisance. They are pretty much the same kind of thing though. Why are the owners of the legit sites NOT submitting lawsuits? Why are the fake sites allowed to exist? A song has a copy right and so does a trade mark...in this case, part of the trade mark is the website.
but seriously....
There are too many people using Firefox under the assumption they are safer. LOL... Sounds to me like this situation has actually helped to create a bug for Windows users (as if they needed any help). Ok, so it was takin care of fairly quickly. I'll give'm that. But, the fact remains, you still can't seperate IE from windows (even though MS says they now can). If you using Windows, your using IE. The use of Firefox makes no differance. You just end up with a differant GUI and maybe a few more bells and whistles.
As far as standards go...
These so called standards are alot of the problem too. In many cases these "standards" are helping to make problems worse.
So much of this is the fact that these browsers are processing the code on the websites that really need to be ignored. That, and people really need to start actually learning something about how and why computers do what they do. The will of the end user to learn would go along way to either solving this or destroying it.