Update: Firefox plugin shipped with malicious code

Mozilla warned Wednesday that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plugin that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months.

Because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2 was polluted with adware, Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting . "Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy," she wrote. "Mozilla does virus scans at upload time but the virus scanner did not catch this issue until several months after the upload."

Mozilla is now going to add additional scans of its software to prevent this kind of thing from happening in the future, she said.

The malware in the language pack is from the Xorer Trojan, according to discussion on Mozilla's Bugzilla developer Web site, which indicates that Mozilla developers first discovered the issue on Tuesday.

"I think it (happened) just because the author's local network was infected with the virus, so it modified HTML files," wrote developer Hai-Nam Nguyen. "The infected code just display(s) annoying banner but it can't propagate."

Mozilla missed the code during its initial scan because antivirus vendors had not yet added detection for Xorer into their products, Snyder said in an interview. Antivirus vendor Panda Security first detected Xorer on Feb. 28, 10 days after the infected plugin was published.

Firefox developers have now scanned all of their plugins. The Vietnamese language pack is the only one that had this kind of code, she said.

The open-source browser maker does not know how many people were infected with the adware, but the plugin was downloaded more than 1,200 times in the past week and has been downloaded 16,667 times since November.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Web page for the plugin was off-line as Mozilla scrambled to come up with a new, adware-free version of the language pack. In the meantime, users of the software should disable the plugin, Snyder said.

Xorer added a script to the Vietnamese language pack's HTML files that would have taken Firefox users to adware servers as they were surfing the Internet, Snyder said.

Snyder did not know exactly how the adware code was added, but she said that this kind of problem could affect any software provider -- open source or not. "In most software development environments the developers aren't kept in a dark cave," she said. "They browse the Web or take those laptops to a coffee shop "

"It's just a fact of life," she added.

Other vendors have been hit with similar problems. In late 2006 Apple shipped Video iPods that contained the RavMonE.exe virus. And late last year, retailer Best Buy shipped digital picture frames that contained malware.

Although some might say Mozilla's incident underscores the risks of open-source software development, this type of issue could crop up at a company like Microsoft too, said Eric Schultze, chief technology officer at Shavlik Technologies. "Most products that ship today include HTML files in them," he said via instant message. "Any one of them could suffer from this."

Mozilla was already doing the right thing scanning their code before upload, Schultze said. "But it shows the need to have tight security on developer systems."

 

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Belgium accuses China of cyberattacks

It’s not just the U.S. and U.K. who are crying foul over China's behavior in cyberspace -- now the government of tiny Belgium has accused hackers from the country of targeting its systems.

Justice minister Jo Vandeurzen is reported to have claimed that the Federal Government had been targeted by Chinese hackers, backing up a separate statement by Belgium's foreign affairs minister, Karel De Grucht that his ministry had been hit by espionage in recent weeks.

In both cases, the Belgians appear certain that the culprits were Chinese and that the Beijing authorities must know something about events, although no evidence has been offered to back up these allegations. The precise nature of the attacks has not been explained either.

[ See related story about accusations that  China's military hacked Pentagon computers. ]

If the accusation is justified, it is starting to look as if Chinese-originated cyberattacks have spread well beyond the obvious Western targets.

The Chinese have been implicated in acts of cyber espionage in the last couple of years, including various alleged assaults on U.S. military systems in 2006 and 2007. As recently as last September, a "leaked" report blamed the Chinese for a similar attack on the Pentagon.

The U.S. reports have come in the form of briefings from unnamed individuals or leaks, suggesting that the U.S. was sending a coded warning to the Chinese that such events risked damaging relations between the countries.

Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.

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