Author Topic: Fail: Chrome, Firefox, and IE all crack during hacking competition By Meghan Kelly  (Read 1809 times)

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/fail-chrome-firefox-and-ie-all-crack-during-hacking-competition/2013/03/08/b58eed8e-8783-11e2-a80b-3edc779b676f_print.html

Fail: Chrome, Firefox, and IE all crack during hacking competition
By Meghan Kelly | VentureBeat.com, Published: March 8

Chrome, Internet Explorer, and Firefox all fell to the mercy of the hackers Thursday. That is, in a controlled environment. Security firms Vupen and MWR Labs were able to crack the browsers during a condoned bug-hunt, with one company winning $100,000 for finding a huge hole.

The Pwn2Own competition is an event at the CanSecWest conference in Vancouver. The competition was created by HP’s DVLabs as part of its Zero Day Initiative: an attempt to get more people to find and report bugs as opposed to exploiting them for personal gains. This year’s Pwn2Own competition turned up a number of interesting hacks, with three major browsers all falling: Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Chrome.

Vupen, a security research firm based in France, cracked both Firefox and Internet Explorer. It roughly explained the attack in a tweet (warning: there’s a lot of security vocabulary coming), “We’ve pwned Firefox using a use-after-free and a brand new technique to bypass ASLR/DEP on Win7 without the need of any ROP.”

The technique involves recalling memory that the browser had previously “freed,” (user-after-free), after which they were able to mess with the technology that protects a computer system from letting bad code execute.

In Internet Explorer’s case, Vupen says it found two separate “zero-days,” or previously unknown holes in a system, and used them to get inside a Microsoft Surface Pro tablet. From there, the company was able grab hold of the Windows 8.

The company explained, again, in a tweet, “We’ve pwned MS Surface Pro with two IE10 zero-days to achieve a full Windows 8 compromise with sandbox bypass.”

Lastly, U.K.-based security firm MWR Labs cracked Chrome and also gained full control of the operating system, this time Windows 7. It also “demonstrated a full sandbox bypass exploit.” The company explained in a blog post that it found a zero-day in Chrome “running on a modern Windows-based laptop.” It was able to exploit the vulnerability by performing a very similar attack to what took down Facebook, Microsoft, and a number of other well-known companies: it had the laptop visit a malicious website. From there the website probed Chrome and was able to get control of the area of the browser that executes code “in the context of the sandboxed renderer process,” or the protective area that allows code to run, but restrict it from using any other part of the system but the CPU and memory.

The sandbox cannot, however, protect against any attacks against the kernel, or the root of the operating system, it exists in and that’s exactly what MWR took advantage of. It found a vulnerability in the kernel, exploited it, and gained full access to the Windows 7 system.

Shabam.

All of these browsers had been previously patched in preparation for the competition, showing just how much can be missed and how valuable these types of bug-finding events are. MWR won $100,000 as a result. Of course, both MWR and Vupen properly disclosed all the documentation of its findings to the appropriate browser security teams.
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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So let me get this straight: the vulnerability does not seem to be in the browser, but in the operating system itself. In other words, it's not the browser that is at fault; it's Windows.

I also notice at least in the Chrome case, it requires active navigation to a malicious site. Believe it or not, I ran Windows XP on my laptops for nine years, without any antivirus protection whatsoever, and only once have I ever had to deal with any sort of malware (in that case, it was apparently a hack of a legitimate Web site). The answer is simply to avoid untrustworthy and suspicious looking Web sites, and that will make as much of a difference as any anti-malware product.
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Oceander

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So let me get this straight: the vulnerability does not seem to be in the browser, but in the operating system itself. In other words, it's not the browser that is at fault; it's Windows.

I also notice at least in the Chrome case, it requires active navigation to a malicious site. Believe it or not, I ran Windows XP on my laptops for nine years, without any antivirus protection whatsoever, and only once have I ever had to deal with any sort of malware (in that case, it was apparently a hack of a legitimate Web site). The answer is simply to avoid untrustworthy and suspicious looking Web sites, and that will make as much of a difference as any anti-malware product.

Unfortunately, that is a lot easier said than done for the vast majority of people.

Offline Atomic Cow

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Any program can be hacked if someone is determined enough and has the skills.  Nothing is totally secure no matter how much the companies try to make it.
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Offline jmyrlefuller

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Unfortunately, that is a lot easier said than done for the vast majority of people.
As I've always said, never underestimate the stupidity of the American people, and the 2012 election proves that.
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Offline Rivergirl

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I have had constant malware attacks when I visit Breitbart.

On occasion a visit to any link on Drudge brings the same result. 


Offline Atomic Cow

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Use Firefox or Chrome with Noscript and Adblock Plus installed, especially No Script.  It will keep Java and Flash from running on a website unless you tell it to.  This is how the vast majority of viruses and malware are spread.
"...And these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange, even to the men who used them."  H. G. Wells, The World Set Free, 1914

"The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections." -Lord Acton