Hackers Increasingly Target Browsers

Threats against browsers are getting more sophisticated and branching out into such exotic areas as gaming, experts told attendees at the recent RSA Conference 2008.

New attacks from games and virtual-world Web sites can deliver bot-like control of browsers to attackers, said Ed Skoudis, a security consultant with Intelguardians, speaking at RSA. All that's needed is for the infected image of an avatar to appear. "The character walks into view of the screen, and I take over the box," he said.

Compromised browsers can act as a stage to launch further hacking of computers, Skoudis said. An attack could shut off corrupted machines' keyboard and mouse control, making it more difficult to stop. Or a compromised browser could escalate a machine's network privileges, and even change time stamps in registries to mask the attacks from later forensic investigation, he said. (Compare forensics tools.)

Browser attacks can be layered so an infected site might divert a browser to another site that barrages it with a broad spectrum of attacks, seeking vulnerabilities to take advantage of, said Rahit Dhamankar, head of security research for TippingPoint Technologies.