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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

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Browser Holes

Firefox joins the
swiss cheese corps...

Hackers are taking their cue from terrorist groups, and starting to go after softer targets. After a solid decade of spreading worms through large cyber networks, they have finally zeroed in on the home user.

Financial service companies had been considered lucrative targets right up to this past year, but now, according to Symantec, in their latest Internet Security Threat Report, 86% of all hack attacks are pointed at home computers. The most obvious reason being that the larger networks have finally tightened up their security, and that makes the casual web surfer at home an easier mark.

It's not just opening infected emails anymore that users have to worry about. More often today malicious code is aimed at client-side applications, which means they're using your web browser and desktop goodies to poke around in your files. Microsoft's Internet Explorer was the big target right off the bat, simply because it was the most widely used, and over the years IE has been patched more times than an old bicycle innertube, but that's all changing now.

The most surprising part of the Symantec report is which browser the hackers have exploit the most lately. Mozilla's Firefox, a favorite among a lot of folks these days simply because of all the attacks aimed at IE, now seems to have the largest number of problems. Symantec turned up 47 vulnerabilites [holes that need to be plugged] in the latest version of Firefox. Internet Explorer wasn't that far behind with 38 vulnerabilites documented. You Apple folks out there, don't start grinning too broadly, your new Safari browser currently has 12 certified problem areas, double what it had 6 months ago. That means Apple is on the hit list too.

The moral is, when you surf the web, you have to act as though you're making a visit to the local dog pound. Keep your eyes open, and watch where you step, then update update update.