Old bugs blight shiny new browsers

IE7 and Firefox 2.0 both hit

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Software & Security, 30th October 2006 13:35 GMT

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An old security bug provides a way to crash Firefox 2.0, security researchers have discovered. The memory corruption vulnerability involving the handling of JavaScript code has been known about since June 2006 and Firefox version 1.5.0.7 was supposed to fix the problem.

Despite this, Firefox 2.0 remains vulnerable to this issue. Due to code reuse, other Mozilla products are also likely to be affected, a posting on Bugtraq warns. The flaw might be used to inject hostile code into vulnerable systems, but so far nothing more dangerous than an ability to crash the browser has been demonstrated.

In other browser security news, security notification firm Secunia has published details of another bug involving IE7. In default configuration, IE7 is vulnerable to a Window Injection vulnerability that previously hit IE6.

The flaw means it's possible for a malicious website to inject new content into a popup window, which has been opened by a trusted site and is thus potentially useful in phishing attacks.

"In IE7 this is mitigated by the address bar always being visible. However, if this is combined with the IE7 'Popup Address Bar Spoofing Weakness' issue from last week, the attack would be very convincing," Secunia CTO Thomas Kristensen said. ®

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