Last week’s breach of Italian security firm Hacking Team exposed documentation that detailed the firm’s use of previously unknown security weaknesses in Adobe’s pervasive Flash platform. Typically known as “zero-day” vulnerabilities, these types of holes are being exploited by cybercriminals from the moment they are discovered, and companies will scramble madly to patch the problems and distribute the fix to their customers. Apparently fed up with the ongoing security failures of the plugin and Adobe’s lackluster speed at fixing them, Mozilla has started blocking outdated Flash plugins from running in Firefox, and Facebook’s security czar has called for the troubled platform to be retired:
It is time for Adobe to announce the end-of-life date for Flash and to ask the browsers to set killbits on the same day.
— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) July 12, 2015
What this means for you:
If you are the owner of a website that uses Flash, you should review whether its use is optional or required, with the latter choice presenting numerous challenges, including alienating a large segment of your mobile browsers; both iOS and Android require special, third-part apps to run Flash that are typically not free. Adding this to Google’s latest ranking algorithm which disfavors sites that aren’t mobile friendly, and you could end up with a website that gets relegated to a dark corner of the internet.
As a website visitor, at minimum you should update your Flash plugin immediately, and only do so by getting the latest version from Adobe’s website. Do not follow links or popups that appear while visiting websites – 99% of the time they are not legitimate and will lead to a malware infection. If you’d prefer to stop using Flash altogether, you can follow these instructions to make Flash ask for permission every time it runs:
Hackers are now taking advantage of conscientious users who have been repeatedly warned by folks like myself to keep their software, specifically their browsers, up to date. If a user happens to surf to a website hosting this new style of attack, they will be presented with a realistic-looking warning that asserts their browser is out of date, but if they click the convenient link to update the browser, they instead be infected with a trojan that will forcibly change the browser homepage to a site that will deliver a full payload of malware. If the user is unfortunate enough to have his or her anti-malware software overrun, they will quickly have a severely compromised computer.
What this means for you:
You should only ever download updates for your software from the manufacturer’s website, as it’s extremely unlikely for manufacturers to use third-party hosts for software updates. In the above example, users were directed to download an update from a domain “securebrowserupdate” which is something Microsoft, Google, Mozilla or Apple would never do for their browsers. If you happen across a pop-up warning that an update is available for your browser, and you aren’t sure it’s legitimate, close it, then check your update status through the browser’s built into the interface, usually under the “Help” menu. Still not sure? Why not call an expert like C2?
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
A recent study by security firm NSS Labs shows that Google’s Chrome browser still has the best detection rate (94%) for spotting phishing URLs, and on average, new malware sites are reported and blocked by all browsers within 5 hours of discovery, a significant improvement over the 16+ hours that same process would have taken in 2009. Firefox showed the best response time to reporting and blocking new sites at 2.3 hours – more than twice as quick as IE10.
What this means for you:
All of the major browsers have significantly improved their ability to protect users, to the point that there is very little statistical difference in their security capabilities. Many of my clients still ask me if one is better than the other, and the answer is always, “It depends on what you need the browser to do.” I still use Chrome for most of my work, but there are still enough times when I’m working with online apps that only work with Internet Explorer. The most important factor to consider is making sure whatever browser you do use is kept up to date, and that you practice safe and cautious surfing whenever working with unfamiliar websites.