All Browsers susceptible on Holiday Season

January 7, 2009 Computer News

We never heard about security flaws in rival browsers to Internet Explorer, but this past week Firefox, Opera, and computer_by_lulu2000 Safari all got patched as well, leaving only Google’s Chrome as the safer alternative after Microsoft released yet another critical update to IE.

Firefox patched up four serious flaws in Version 2.0 and three in Version 3.0, most of them involving cross-scripting vulnerabilities. Opera issued an update as well, addressing various flaws allowing the execution of arbitrary code.

Apple’s Safari was hit with”cross-site cooking”, a vulnerability that could allow websites to set cookies for country-specific domains – co.uk, co.au – allowing hackers to “perform a session fixation attack and hijack a user’s HTTP session.”
CVWE-2008-4234 was added to Apples fix list, an incomplete blacklist in teh Quarantine feature of Mac OS X 10.5, allowing attackers to avoid the”potentially unsafe” warning message.
As usual Microsoft has been hit hardest by attacks. Two critical zero-day exploites have arisen in addition to a second advisory for Microsoft Word. Document attacks seem to be the rage lately, and the latests zero-day exploit uses the”people trust document files” strategy.
Microsoft rushed out Bulletin MS08-078, affecting IE 5.01-1E 7 and plugging up holes allowing for remote code execution.
One of the most prominent and unique techniques adopted by the malware authors involves a Microsoft word document being sent out to an unsuspecting user.”

Make sure whichever browser you use or prefer has its booster shots and secondly it would be a good idea to switch to Chrome until the holidays are over.