Adware/Spyware

Firefox Spyware is spreading

One of the main reasons for the Firefox browser's successful seizure of market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the desire to escape the annoying spyware. However, spyware experts indicate that with its increased popularity, Firefox itself will become a target for spyware creators, who are already poking at the open source browser alternative. Now it becomes true.

Current situation

Now this trend just starts, but it is not popular as IE based spyware. The reason is that the Firefox market share is about 20%. Comparing with the 60% market share of IE, it is still a small number. We can predict, as the Firefox market share grows up, the spyware creator will produce more Firefox based spywares. As a snapshot, here is the list of the known popular Firefox spyware:

1) Formspy:

This is a detection for a malware that is installed as a Mozilla/Firefox component extension. Upon execution, it registers Mozilla event listeners to the malware and sends information submitted by the victim in the web browser to a malicious website. These information can include, but is not limited to, credit numbers, passwords, e-banking pin numbers etc.

http://us.mcafee.com/virusInfo/default.asp?id=description&virus_k=140256

2) JS.Ffsniff

JS.Ffsniff is a JavaScript Trojan horse that logs information from HTML forms in Web pages and sends the information to a predefined email address. The Trojan is a JavaScript file, which can be included with a malicious Mozilla Firefox browser extension.

http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2006-030316-4323-99&tabid=1

Is it difficult to create a Firefox spyware?

Is it more difficult to create a Firefox spyware than IE spyware? Is Firefox a more secure browser? The answer is NO. Similiar with IE spyware utilizing BHO to inject spyware into IE browser, Firefox spyware makes itself as a Firefox plugin or extension in order to be injected into Firefox browser. Consequently, it starts to monitor everything Firefox browser browses. From Mozzila website, you can find very detail document about how to develope a Firefox extension. here is the link.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Dev_:_Extensions

Knowing how to create a Firefox extension, the next thing the spyware creator needs to do is to make a extension to collect password, credit card information and send it to a malicious website. Also find a way to distribute the spyware. We all know the often used way to distribut the spyware is through Internet.