How scary is this: “IE8, Safari and Firefox All Fall in Hacking Test”?
That means, if you’re using any of those, your security can be compromised. “But that’s most of the browsers out there”, you say. True. The message, actually, is: nobody is safe.
No system is really 100% secure or unbreakable. Some just make it harder, not impossible, for intruders to break in. As they say, once you’re plugged, you’re a potential target. And once you fall for social engineering strategies like giving info or running a downloaded script or program, you’re owned.
But on the brighter side, not all system intruders are as talented as “Nils”, the winner of the CanSecWest Pwn2Own hacking contest where the above browsers were cracked. Nor do most have all the time in the world.
So, by taking obvious precautions like updating your anti-malware regularly, turning on your firewall and network address translation, if you have one, you’ll be making it more difficult for ordinary intruders and script kiddies to break into your system to the point that they might just give up and look for other easier targets.
Just remember to be careful with what you download. Some software, specially the cracked and pirated ones, may contain malicious code. Running these would expose your system to anything from simple (but annoying) spam to dangerous exploits and anything in between.
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This is too scary!
ReplyDeleteThis shows that there are people like Nil who have a great talent and no matter what you do you can't hide...
Security is a great, I used to analyze viruses after installing them in my machine..
I miss those days.
I am amazed on how all the browsers have been breached in 3 days..
the methods we are using for protection are good enough to hold newbies and the lamers. But they can't hold back the Nils.
"the methods we are using for protection are good
ReplyDeleteenough to hold newbies and the lamers. But they
can't hold back the Nils."
Unfortunately, yes. Our security measures are good only for those who the security community calls "script kiddies". However, there is no stopping a professional wielding the power of Linux or BSD, armed with Perl and C, and knows TCP/IP like the back of his hand.
The reason for this is compromise. They can make a browser more difficult to crack but user experience would suffer greatly because rich and interactive content would have to be severely restricted or limited.
If you use Firefox, you can download the Noscript extension and your browser would be reasonably safe.
"Unfortunately, yes. Our security measures are good only for those who the security community calls "script kiddies". However, there is no stopping a professional wielding the power of Linux or BSD, armed with Perl and C, and knows
ReplyDeleteTCP/IP like the back of his hand."
this is Ironman :D, you are right..
yes there is a big trade off , users will start to complain ..
sort of an equalizer