Chrome has also inherited a potentially serious security flaw from the old version of WebKit it is based on. An attacker could easily trick users into launching an executable Java file by combining a flaw in WebKit with a known Java bug and some smart social engineering.

Security expert Aviv Raff, who first discovered this flaw, set up a demo of the exploit here. (Note: This page will automatically download a Java file onto your desktop). You can safely click on the download, as it only opens up a notepad application written in Java.


Carpet-Bombing :
chome_exploit.pngThe problem here is that, after a user double-clicks the download at the bottom of the screen, this application is opened without any warning, which would allow a malicious hacker to easily execute any Java program on a user's machine.

Two facts make this exploit especially embarrassing for Google. First of all, Google stressed the security of Chrome in both the official announcement as well as in today's live video demo just before the launch.

Apple Already Did It :
More importantly, as ZDNet reports, Apple already patched WebKit against this flaw when it released Safari 3.2.1 in July, though only after the flaw had been known already for more than two months. Google, however, is using an older version of WebKit as the basis for Chrome.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment



Add this topic to :