Information Security News: Google plugs security holes in Web site

[InfoSec News <isn () c4i org>]

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/122205-google-holes.html

By Elizabeth Montalbano
IDG News Service
12/22/05

Google has patched security flaws in its Web site that would have 
exposed users to phishing and other attacks designed to steal account 
information, according to security researchers. 

Researchers at risk management software company Watchfire posted an 
advisory this week about the flaws, which are called XSS, or 
cross-site scripting, vulnerabilities. These types of vulnerabilities 
leave a site open to various attacks, such as account hijacking, 
changing of user settings, cookie theft/poisoning or false 
advertising. 

The advisory for the flaws can be found here [1]. 

The possibility for attacks at www.google.com was present when users 
encountered two different error pages, the "404 not found" error 
message and a Web-site redirection error message. 

Google did not properly secure these pages, which exposed users to 
possible attack by exploiting the 7-bit Unicode Transformation Format 
character-encoding mechanism, according to Watchfire. 

The company corrected the flaws by using character-encoding 
enforcement, according to Watchfire.

Google was not immediately available for comment Thursday.

[1] http://www.watchfire.com/securityzone/advisories/12-21-05.aspx



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