Access member only content, take part in discussions with comments on blogs, news and reviews and receive all the latest security industry news directly to your inbox. Join now for free.
A confirmation email has been sent to your email address - SUPPLIED EMAIL HERE. Please click on the link in the email to verify your email address. You need to verify your email before you can start posting.
If you do not receive your confirmation email within the next few minutes, it may be because the email has been captured by a junk mail filter. Please ensure you add the domain @scmagazine.com.au to your white-listed senders.
Mozilla has done an about-face after disclosing that two "experimental" add-ons for its Firefox browser contained malware targeting Windows users. The company has admitted that one of the plug-ins originally believed to contain a trojan, version 4.0 of the Sothink Web Video Downloader, is free of any malicious code. The extension allows Firefox users to easily download videos from the web. As it turned out, a software protection system that uses encryption to protect the add-on from pirates and malware was actually to blame. "Since the disclosure, we've worked with security experts and add-on developers to determine that the suspected trojan...was a false positive, and the extension does not contain malware," Mozilla said in a blog post. "We apologize to our users and the developers of Sothink for any inconvenience this has caused." Shortly after Mozilla initially revealed that it believed the add-on was malicious, Sothink Media, which makes the video downloader, objected, saying the plug-in was validated by a third party as free of malware. It also included a link to a VirusTotal report, which turned up zero infections when the add-on was tested against 40 commonly used anti-virus products. The next day, in another blog post, Sothink Media explained why the add-on was marked as malicious: "In the version 4.0, the encryption program for Web Video Downloader used to be Armadillo. The false virus report was caused because of Armadillo's own disadvantage. Armadillo isn't a trojan in and of itself. It's a compression utility that is often used to compress/hide malicious code in .exe's. That's the reason why the scans are hitting on the file as suspicious. So there isn't any virus in Web Video downloader or in Armadillo actually." Mozilla's investigation did, however, confirm that the other add-on it identified as containing a trojan, Master Filer, is affected. But the company lowered its estimate of infected installations of that plug-in, which has since been removed from Mozilla's archive of add-ons, from 6,000 to fewer than 700. See original article on scmagazineus.com
To begin commenting right away, you can log in below or register an account if you don't yet have one. Please read our guidelines on commenting. Offending posts will be removed and your access may be suspended. Abusive or obscene language will not be tolerated. The comments below do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of SC Magazine, Haymarket Media or its employees.