Glaswegian

Threats against browsers are getting more sophisticated and branching out into such exotic areas as gaming, experts told attendees at RSA Conference 2008.

New attacks from games and virtual-world websites can deliver bot-like control of browsers to attackers, said Ed Skoudis, a security consultant with Intelguardians, speaking at RSA. All that's needed is for the infected image of an avatar to appear. "The character walks into view of the screen, and I take over the box," he said.

Compromised browsers can act as a stage to launch further hacking of computers, Skoudis said. An attack could shut off corrupted machines' keyboard and mouse control, making it more difficult to stop. Or a compromised browser could escalate a machine's network privileges, and even change time stamps in registries to mask the attacks from later forensic investigation, he said.

Browser attacks can be layered so an infected site might divert a browser to another site that barrages it with a broad spectrum of attacks, seeking vulnerabilities to take advantage of, said Rahit Dhamankar, head of security research for TippingPoint Technologies.


http://www.techworld.com/security/ne...S&NewsID=11957