Reading through my RSS feeds today, I stumbled upon an interesting post over at Neowin entitled “Vista’s Security Rendered Completely Useless by New Exploit” which reports on a new technique that can “bypass all memory protection safeguards that Microsoft built into Windows Vista.”

Mark Dowd of IBM Internet Security Systems (ISS) and Alexander Sotirov, of VMware Inc. have discovered a technique that can be used to bypass all memory protection schemes that have been built into Windows Vista by Microsoft.  These new methods are basically used to get around Vista’s Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR), Data Execution Prevention (DEP) and other protections by loading malicious content through a web browser.

In a nutshell, this hack is something that many of us weren’t expecting.

While this may seem like any standard security hole, other researchers say that the work is a major breakthrough and there is very little that Microsoft can do to fix the problems. These attacks work differently than other security exploits, as they aren’t based on any new Windows vulnerabilities, but instead take advantage of the way Microsoft chose to guard Vista’s fundamental architecture. According to Dino Dai Zovi, a popular security researcher told, "the genius of this is that it’s completely reusable. They have attacks that let them load chosen content to a chosen location with chosen permissions. That’s completely game over."

Microsoft has yet to post a statement officially, but they are apparently aware of the security issue and are waiting for the exploit to be made public. We can only wait and watch as to what comes up now…

If successful this could be a mess as good as the DNS exploit in the wild these days. This can potentially change the whole view of how the industry thinks about hacks in my opinion. Microsoft will have a quite a lot of work on hands in the coming days, I’m sure. We’ll know more about this in the near future and there even lies possibility of being faced with the prospect of your "secure" server being stripped completely naked of all its protection.

You think its game over for the already struggling Vista?

A Malicious exploit has been discovered in Firefox that would allow a Hacker to use a Malicious JAR file to get access to your Google Account and all your confidential information.

Firefox is falling into some serious trouble over the past few months, with more and more security exploits being discovered and being exploited. The latest threat involves the usage of a malicious JAR file. The flaw is still in the wild and the problem persists with the websites of Major Internet companies that includes Google. Beford.org has found a way to use the JAR exploit to get details of Google Accounts using a Malicious JAR file specially crafted to take advantage of the exploit.

Well I’m going to refrain myself from writing about the Exploit. I have tested this exploit on my own spare Google Account, and I can confirm that this works. Its better be to safe because I’m not sure when exactly is Google and Mozilla planning to patch up the security holes. I suggest you download the NoScript addon for Firefox. Right now NoScript seems to be the only solution. If you are wondering what NoScript is, then here is what its developer has to say about it :

It allows JavaScript, Java and other executable content to run only from trusted domains of your choice, e.g. your home-banking web site, and guards the “trust boundaries” against cross-site scripting attacks (XSS). Such a preemptive approach prevents exploitation of security vulnerabilities (known and even unknown!) with no loss of functionality…

The other way to stay safe would be to visit sites that you trust and not download anything that looks suspicious. Given the vastness of the Internet, however careful you are, this can be still a threat. Keep yourself signed out of all Accounts until this is patched. But do remember to stay safe.

This exploit was known to Mozilla for quite sometime and hasn’t still patched it. Given that this vulnerability affects both Google and Firefox lets see who gets this patched first.

Via GNUCitizen and Bedford