BitDefender, the well-known vendor of security software, has recently discovered a new malware, which filters and steals secret data like passwords sent by the victim to a large number of designated banking websites which are used everyday in the UK for online shopping and financial transactions.
And the interesting thing is that this time the target has been Firefox Browser, instead of Internet Explorer, which has long been the favorite among the info-stealers.
Firefox has been the preferred browser of millions of “informed” netizens and its market share is reported to be increasing at the cost of marketshare of Internet Explorer. This would have caused the developers of the malware to train their guns at Firefox Community.
The malware, which BitDefender dubbed “Trojan.PWS.ChromeInject.A” sits in Firefox’s add-ons folder. Once installed it gets to work every time Firefox is started.
Harvested login credentials will be sent to a web address similar to [removed]eex.ru. Both the domain and the hosting server are located in Russia, which points to the origins of this latest e-threat.
The malware uses JavaScript to identify more than 100 financial and money transfer Web sites, including Barclays, Wachovia, Bank of America, and PayPal along with two dozen or so Italian and Spanish banks. When it recognizes a Web site, it will collect logins and passwords, forwarding that information to a server in Russia.
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The Firefox users can get infected with this malware through exploitation of the browser weaknesses by some drive-by-download mechanism or when they click on some rogue hyperlink.
When it runs on a PC, it registers itself in Firefox’s system files as “Greasemonkey,” a well-known collection of scripts that add extra functionality to Web pages rendered by Firefox.
BitDefender has already updated all its security software and if you are running their up-to-date applications, then you are most probably protected from this vulnerability.
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