Web Security


Details Emerge on IE 8 Data-Stealing Bug

Security researcher Chris Evans has released details of the data-stealing bug in Internet Explorer 8 that he publicized earlier this month, saying that the CSS flaw can be used to force victims to post messages on Twitter and that the bug appears to be no closer to being fixed.

Google Expands Malware-Alert Services for Site Operators

Google is expanding the set of tools it makes available to Webmasters to help them detect and remove malware infections on their sites, adding a new alert service that will let the owners of large blocks of sites know as early as possible about the presence of malicious content on any of the sites that are under their control.


A security researcher has discovered a potentially crippling
vulnerability in one of the most widely used botnet toolkits, a finding
that makes it easy for blackhats and whitehats alike to take control of
huge networks of infected PCs. Read the full article. [The Register]

By Chris EngIs anyone else getting tired of hearing excuses from customers — and worse yet, the security community itself — about how hard
it is to fix cross-site scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities? Oh, come on.
Fixing XSS is like squashing ants, but some would have you believe it’s
more like slaying dragons. I haven’t felt inspired to write a blog
post in a while, but every once in a while, 140 characters just isn’t
enough. Grab your cup of coffee, because I may get a little rambly.

Researchers have discovered a variant of the Zeus bot malware that specifically targets users who perform online-banking operations from the mobile phones, playing on the increasingly common use of SMS-based one-time passwords in order to dupe users into loading the malware.

Microsoft has released updated workaround guidance for the ASP.NET padding oracle vulnerability, suggesting that customers use a technique to block requests that specify an application error. However, the researchers who developed the attack on ASP.NET have said that the workaround is not sufficient to prevent the attack.