Microsoft, Mozilla look into browser flaws
Joris Evers, CNET News.com
ZDNet News: February 16, 2007, 11:53 AM PT Microsoft and Mozilla are each working to tackle recently disclosed security flaws in the Internet Explorer and Firefox Web browsers.
The vulnerabilities were described earlier this week in postings to a popular security mailing list by researcher Michal Zalewski. Each browser could enable miscreants to grab data via malicious Web sites, Zalewski said.
In addition, another Firefox flaw could let attackers change cookie files on the user's PC, he said.
In the case of Internet Explorer, the problem affects the latest version, IE 7, and probably earlier releases, Zalewski wrote. Microsoft confirmed that the flaw could open up files stored on a PC's hard drive to an attacker, but only if the location of a given file is already known.
"In order to be successful, an attacker in advance would have to convince the user to enter the location of a file into an attacker's Web page through social engineering," a Microsoft representative said in an e-mail statement Friday. The software giant is still investigating the issue and will take "appropriate action," the representative said.
Flaws in Firefox
Firefox is affected by two security holes, both described by Zalewski. One is similar to the Internet Explorer problem, while the other could let miscreants change cookie files stored on a PC running the vulnerable browser. Cookies are small files stored on a PC by Web sites, to remember login credentials and site preferences, for example.
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