We have relaunched: What's new at ZDNet Asia?

Attacking Web 2.0 at LinuxWorld

Summary

Researcher offers new examples of how bad guys are exploiting flaws.

Events

The 2nd InfoSecurity Summit HK 2010
17 Mar 2010

Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, Hong Kong

IT Architect Regional Conference Singapore 2010
20 - 21 Apr 2010

Singapore Management University, Singapore

The Internet Show 2010
21-22 Apr 2010

Suntec Singapore

At LinuxWorld today, SPI Dynamic's senior security engineer, Matt Fisher, talked about the vulnerabilities of Web 2.0.

His talk, although not much different from that of his colleagues Billy Hoffman and Brian Sullivan last week at Black Hat, offered some new examples of what criminals are doing online, armed with little more than a desktop browser. Cross-site scripting attacks are the Number one threat, according to the Mitre organization, in part because they are so easy to do.

In particular, Fisher singled out social-networking sites. Because the site depends on user content, the site allows users to upload HTML code, and in most cases, any HTML code. Knowing this, Fisher said someone could put a malicious script code into a blog post where it would sit until someone came along and read it. What bad could possibly happen from that, you might wonder? Fisher said that when someone in a corporate environment opens it, the attacker can then execute code inside the corporate perimeter on the internal network.

If that attack is too passive, Fisher suggested another scenario. In this scenario an attacker embeds malicious JavaScript into a customer help ticket. The help ticket is archived inside the corporate network. Every time a customer-support technician opens the help ticket, the code infects his or her desktop, and potentially, the corporate network.

Unlike operating system vulnerabilities, which can be addressed with a patch, cross-site scripting attacks are not generic; they are specific to the Web application. The key to mitigating these attacks is to limit what end users can and cannot do on the site. That sounds simple, but newer Web 2.0 sites often do not check for common, even old-school methods of attack.

Talkback

Add your opinion

In order to post a comment, you need to be registered. (Sign In or register below)

Post your comment
Transform your business interactions with real-time voice, video and telepresence solutions.
Tech Vendor: Cisco

ZDNet Asia Live

"There will be no more updates for Firefox 3.0.x," Mozilla, the last update will be Firefox 3.0.19, due March 30 http://bit.ly/aiouLB

14 minutes ago by abhishekkatiyar on topsy

[TECH] URL Shorteners slow Web redirection. - http://bit.ly/bySnWK @zdnetasia

URL shorteners are great but they can slow web redirection & you pray it would never go down http://bit.ly/bySnWK via @zdnetasia

Temasek Holdings eyeing tech stocks, indicating optimistic outlook on IT sector. http://bit.ly/aM7VwU

Web redirection through universal resource locator (URL) shorteners is adding extra seconds to page load time http://bit.ly/czbZxe

1 hour 58 minutes ago by abhishekkatiyar on topsy

Chinese agencies cry foul over Google. http://bit.ly/by6rwV

The Pirates of The Philippine Islands get slammed. http://bit.ly/a1NJlf

2 hours 25 minutes ago by larsjeppesen on topsy

China's enterprise software market is predicted to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 14.6% from 2008 to 2013 http://bit.ly/9rXQlL

2 hours 26 minutes ago by abhishekkatiyar on topsy

all of sg's isps have been practising compulsory invisible proxy for all home subscribers at their backend since many years back alre...

5 hours 22 minutes ago by melvinchia on Web filters mean bad news for business

it is not to good for china.
Proactol

8 hours 6 minutes ago by nathonastle on Chinese ad partners beg Google for information

Salesforce.com is giving 5,000 developers access to its social networking and collaboration platform http://bit.ly/9dbNw5

8 hours 15 minutes ago by abhishekkatiyar on topsy

RT @zdnetasia: HP touts new products and management and productivity tools to address business computing pain points. http://bit.ly/dudgA6

For those with a computer science background, or interested in the high performance computing scene: http://bit.ly/9vFC3i

HP touts new products and management and productivity tools to address business computing pain points. http://bit.ly/dudgA6

** S'pore govt launches traffic Web app. http://www.zdnetasia.com/s-pore-...

the new look site is very nice @zdnetasia @zdnetaustralia

Big up to my peeps at www.ZDNet.com.au (and www.ZDNetasia.com and www.ZDNet.com.uk). Loving the redesign!

McAfee steps up cloud assurance - Zd Net Asia.com
http://www.zdnetasia.com/mcafee-...

Interesting take on social analystics. http://www.zdnetasia.com/blogs/w...

Very good explanation of JMX

1 day 12 minutes ago by Babith B on Managing applications with JMX

The reaction to a report issued Tuesday by Flurry Analytics managed to completely overlook some interesting news--the Android-based Motorola Droid outsold the original iPhone over the same period of time following their respective launches--to focus instead on the sales numbers for the Nexus One.

1 day 15 minutes ago by lonemavericks on diggs

Another ZTE story....

1 day 17 minutes ago by Moderate Your Greed on Philippines opens bid for final 3G license

We at www.fifosys.com have also seen a growth in IT outsourcing and anticipate it as a growing field.

1 day 50 minutes ago by sarah Jane on Companies' outsourcing spend to increase

I agree with you. The iSiVaL is super portable and TVs can't expand their image size. I recorded a video that might bring some ideas to...

1 day 21 minutes ago by Jesse B Andersen on Buying a projector? Try an LED TV instead

hermm... he deserved it.. he shud not talk abt sensitive things like tat, well, he shud think twice before saying all those things, event...

1 day 59 minutes ago by ... on Facebook user charged in Malaysia

Password manager tools are potential security threat. Criminals who hack into the computer can use the password manager to log onto any s...

2 days 59 minutes ago by ohanae on What defaults should random password generators use?

I've found the cross platform utility unetbootin to be rather handy for this kind of thing as well.

2 days 33 minutes ago by Jim on Use Live USB Creator to install Fedora 12 from a USB stick

Thanks for the article. I think the debug command has an "\" after "C:" it should say w32tm /debug /enable /file:C:\l...

2 days 34 minutes ago by Roger Biefer on Manage time accuracy with W32Tm

available in singapore now
http://www.portablemall.com.sg/goods-71-Microsoft+Zune+HD+32GB+-+Platinum.html

2 days 10 minutes ago by steve on Microsoft coy on apps for Zune HD

How about just using http://www.random.org/strings/? It is very configurable, satisfies all of the flexibility requirements you have ment...

2 days 16 minutes ago by Varun V Nair on What defaults should random password generators use?

Wi-Fi as the "Rodney Dangerfield of wireless", is a catchy metaphor, but it's already been used. In fact, it was the title of a...

2 days 15 minutes ago by Martin Suter on Selina Lo: Wired up for Wi-Fi in Asia

Dear Sir/Madam, I am Narasimha Rao.L. From bangalore India , i searching job in abroad , in electronics field, i have 6+ years exp....

3 days 17 minutes ago by Anonymous on Hot tech jobs in Singapore

Good article, computational aspect of acquired knowledge from the social platform is really questionable, given that there are a lot of p...

3 days 23 minutes ago by JN on What will social analytics say about your company?