Vulnerability in Google spreadsheets allows cookie stealing

Security researcher Billy Rios has discovered a vulnerability in Google Spreadsheets which attackers can exploit using links to crafted tables to steal a user’s cookie. According to Rios, the victim has to follow such a link in Internet Explorer. The stolen cookie can be used to access all Google services with the victim’s identity, including reading the victim’s Google Mail.

Rios explains on his blog that the security vulnerability results from incorrect content-type headers or the browser ignoring these headers in HTTP responses returned by the server. The problem is not confined to Internet Explorer: according to Rios, Firefox, Safari and Opera can also ignore the content-type header and attempt to determine the server response content type themselves.

Rios has succeeded in exploiting the vulnerability by injecting HTML content into the server response. To do so he generated a table, the first cell of which contained HTML code and a snippet of JavaScript for displaying the user’s cookie. Google spreadsheets can export data in the text-based csv format, which Internet Explorer interprets as HTML.

“With this single XSS, I can read your Gmail, backdoor your source code (code.google.com), steal all your Google Docs, and basically do whatever I want on Google as if I were you!” notes Rios. Google has now fixed the vulnerability and the browser now renders such crafted table content as text rather than HTML.

Source: Heise Security

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Keep on Fuzzing!

As you will have noticed we’ve posted quite a number of Fuzzing Tools built around different frameworks and in different languages..most for difference targets/purposes too.

Fuzzing has definitely exploded in the last year or so as more people try and understand it and code tools to automate the process. There are tools for Web Services Fuzzing, Web Application Fuzzing and XML Fuzzing.

“Fuzzing has been a round a while – but we are seeing it becoming much higher profile now. Everyone wants it although they don’t necessarily understand it,” principal security consultant for Leviathan Security Michael Eddington told Reg Dev ahead of his RSA presentation.

Eddington hopes to give RSA attendees a better grasp of fuzzing. The top line is fuzzing needs to be factored into the development lifecycle along with other security tests. “The advantage of fuzzing is that it gets round the problem of making assumptions in testing – it stops us being too smart and missing the obvious,” Eddington said.

People are getting more interested in fuzzing and as with penetration testing I’m sure there will be more and more service requests for fuzzing even though people aren’t really sure what it means. The same went for SQL Injection and XSS attacks over the past couple of years.

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ActiveX is least secure plug-in

ActiveX controls made up most of all browser plug-in vulnerabilities in the second half of 2007, according to Symantec.

The company has just released its semi-annual web security report and in it said that Microsoft’s technology, primarily used to create add-ins for Internet Explorer, accounted for 79 percent of the 239 plug-in bugs discovered between July and December 2007. The plug-in with the next-highest number of flaws was Apple’s QuickTime, which had just 8 percent of the six-month’s total.

Only one vulnerability in a plug-in for Mozilla’s Firefox browser was detected in the same period, meaning Firefox’s extensions – the moniker Mozilla uses for plug-ins – accounted for only 0.4 percent of all found flaws.

Symantec argued that ActiveX’s poor showing could stem from several factors, including the availability of “fuzzing” tools that hackers can use to sniff out input vulnerabilities in the controls. But it also fingered several traits inherent to the add-on technology.

“ActiveX is also an attractive target because many users may not be aware that they have installed vulnerable controls, and because of the relative difficulty of removing or patching ActiveX controls once they have been installed,” said Symantec in its Internet Security Threat Report Volume XIII (download PDF). Hackers also root out ActiveX bugs, Symantec continued, because they are used exclusively on Internet Explorer (IE), which still holds nearly 75 percent of the browser user market.

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Disinfecting a virus-laden PC

The first thing is to isolate the computer (no more trading floppies until you’re done) and then begin to disinfect it.

One of my favorite tools is Knoppix. The great thing about this Linux distribution is that you don’t have to know anything about Linux in order to be able to use it. Download the latest copy of Knoppix and burn it to CD from another computer that is virus free to the best of your knowledge. Turn on the “infected” computer and open the CD-ROM drive as soon as you can. Depending on how quickly you can get this done, you may need to reboot the computer to get it to boot from the Knoppix CD.

If you still have a problem getting the computer to boot from the CD, go into BIOS and make sure that the CD-ROM is in the boot order so that it gets seen before the hard drive. If there is anything important that you cant easily recreate, take a moment using Knoppix to back those files to a flash drive so that you can still have them if parts of the drive or some of the files become damaged during the virus removal process.

Once you can get Knoppix to boot, go into the menu and look for the anti-virus software that is installed. Depending on the version of Knoppix that you have, it could be Clam AntiVirus or something similiar. Run the anti-virus software and before doing anything get the latest signature files downloaded. After the signature files are downloaded, run a file level clean on the computer. Depending on how infected your computer is, this could take a while. Once this completes, remove the Knoppix cd from the drive and reboot the computer, allowing to go into Windows. Try at least one other anti-virus software package and make sure that it comes up clean with no viruses being reported.

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NVIDIA takes off with more video cards

NVIDIA is at the top of its game, and looks set to remain so in the meantime as they prepare to saturate the market with even more graphics cards for gamers of every strata and level of society. The new products will be from the GeForce and nForce lines, including the new GeForce 9800 GX2, GeForce 9800 GTX, GeForce 9600 GT GPUs, along with the nForce 790i Ultra SLI media and communications processor (MCP). All these claim to push your computer’s performance to its maximum, regardless of whether you indulge in the latest operating systems, photo applications, mapping software, games, and HD movies.

The GeForce 9800 GX2 GPU is tipped to be the fastest graphics solution in the world, and was specially designed to run today’s graphically-intensive games, 3D applications, and HD movies at extreme resolutions. You get over 256 processing cores on a single board, and it boasts a performance that is up to 60% faster than the closest competitor, retailing for $599 a pop. You can even pair this card up with another to take advantage of NVIDIA Quad SLI technology for Windows Vista and experience unprecedented performance with the highest detail and resolutions possible in today’s most demanding games and applications.

The GeForce 9800 GTX GPU ain’t half bad either with 128 processor cores and provides consumers with the best bang for the buck in the $299-349 price range. You get both 2-way and 3-way SLI technology with the GeForce 9800 GTX GPU making it one of the industry’s most flexible and scalable multi-GPU solution. As for the budget-conscious crowd, there is always the GeForce 9600 GT GPU that claims to deliver immersive gaming with incredible graphics for less than $199. With so many choices to choose from, which is the video card of your choice in your next rig?

Source: Coolest Gadgets

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