A fright at the Opera
By John Leyden
Published Monday 9th August 2004 15:08 GMT
Opera last week updated its browser to defend against a vulnerability
that could allow an attacker to spy on private emails or computer
files.
A flaw in versions of Opera prior to version 7.54 makes it possible
for attackers to read (but not alter) files on a victim's PC or snoop
on mails emails written or received by M2, Opera's mail program. The
vulnerability also opens the door to cookie theft, URL spoofing
(which can be used in phishing attacks) or tracking a user's browsing
history.
Opera version 7.53 and prior on Windows, Linux and Mac are all
affected by the flaw. Users are urged to update to Opera version
7.54, released last Thursday, which defends against this exploit.
The vulnerability was discovered by Israeli security researchers
GreyMagic Software, which has produced an advisory and proof of
concept demo to highlight its concerns. "The vulnerability is a new
variant of an older vulnerability GreyMagic detected in February last
year. This time the 'location' object isn't sufficiently protected
from malicious attacks," it explains.
It's been an indifferent month so far for users of alternative
browsers. Last week Mozilla posted updates to of its Firefox browser,
Thunderbird email client and Mozilla suite to defend against various
security holes. The release includes a fix for a vuln. involving in a
library for the Portable Networks Graphic (PNG) image format used by
several software vendors including the Mozilla Project.
IE users might be permitted a wry smile at other's misfortune, if
they weren’t so busy patching their browser instead. ®
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