Full Disclosure mailing list archives

Re: Unofficial Microsoft patches help hackers, not security


From: bkfsec <bkfsec () sdf lonestar org>
Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2006 10:35:59 -0500

Morning Wood wrote:

everyone knows the best official patch is firefox

umm, no
firefox presents a save or open dialog box.
if the user belives it to be a image he / she is
intended to view, they will simply "open".
thus, windows gladly passes the extention
handler to WMF, game over.
or, they will "save" and simply passing the
mouse over the icon will trigger the exploit,
again... game over


I would like to point out, however, that getting a dialogue box is still infinitely superior to simply browsing and getting owned. You can't stop stupid people from downloading and running trojans, no matter what they're called. (I once saw someone run a file called "fucku_up.exe" -- and warning lights never went off in his head.) However, a dialogue box warning someone before they run a potentially dangerous filetype is a lifesaver to the paranoid and the security conscious.

Maybe not the best patch, but firefox still provides more security than IE does in this matter.

            -bkfsec


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