Notes for 2015-09-05

Hackers spent at least a year spying on Mozilla to discover Firefox security holes – and exploit them

Hackers have known about unpublicized and unpatched critical security holes in the Firefox web browser for a year or more – all by invading Mozilla’s systems. The Mozilla Foundation admitted on Friday that a privileged account on Firefox’s Bugzilla bug-tracking software has been compromised since at least September 2014. Said account, and thus the miscreants who gained access to it, could view the crucial non-public details of security bugs in Firefox that programmers were working on fixing.

Well that is a novel way of finding zero day security holes to exploit… just hack the bug tracking system instead of doing your own research.

We have been saying for a while that Firefox has a lot of security issues, and perhaps this explains why. They still lack some of the basic security features like sandboxing, but hopefully soon they will get around to finishing it up.

DISCUSS ON OUR FORUM

Previous Thoughts You Might Have Missed:

  • Tuesday: Microsoft is Trying Really Hard to Shoot Themselves in the Foot
  • Monday: The Best Upgrade for Your Surface Pro 3 is the SP4 Keyboard
  • Saturday: First Impressions of the Apple TV: Lots of Entering Passwords Using the Remote
  • Friday: Soon, Windows 10 Will Be Automatically Pushed Through Windows Update
  • Monday: The Emperor Has No Clothes and Nobody Cares

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