Ads by TechWords

See your link here
Receive the latest technology news and information.
Networking
Computerworld Daily News (First Look and Wrap-Up)
Computerworld Blogs Newsletter
The Weekly Top 10
Cloud Computing
View all newsletters




Privacy Policy
 

Could Opera Unite be a botmaster's best friend?

June 19, 2009 08:06 PM ET

IDG News Service - Opera has added a lot of cool new features to its upcoming Opera 10 browser, and one of them is almost sure to catch the eye of cyber criminals.

It's called Opera Unite, and while Opera promotes it as an exciting new platform for next-generation Web development, some security experts say it could become the botmaster's best friend.

Opera Unite lets anyone run a Web server from their desktop. The browser connects to an Opera proxy server, which then allows the browser to serve content to the rest of the Internet. This simplifies things for home users who want to host their own Web pages; with Opera's architecture, they don't have to configure firewalls or worry about their Internet service providers blocking Web server traffic.

But it also makes a precious resource more readily available to the bad guys.

In recent years, hacked Web sites have become the fastest-growing way for criminals to spread their malicious software. They have developed automated Web-hacking code, such as the recently reported Gumblar program, that can quickly hack into tens of thousands of Web pages in just a short period of time.

With Opera Unite, they may suddenly have a whole new crop of computers to attack.

Unite was just introduced as part of the Opera 10 beta this month, but it's only a matter of time until the criminals start playing with it, according to Don Jackson, a researcher with SecureWorks. "Bad guys always need Web servers," he said. "Anything that runs a Web server is prone to attack."

But because Opera Unite runs on the desktop, it may be easier to hack than most Web servers. "In this case it's a little worse, because instead of a machine that's managed in a data center, you may have someone on a machine in a hotel network that has no firewall on it," Jackson said.

Opera attack code is already included in the majority of browser attack tools that Jackson has studied. With Unite, he expects the hackers who write browser attack software to pay even more attention to Opera. "I think there will be a push to keep your exploit kit in marketable condition by developing exploits for Opera 10," he said.

Opera says it will monitor sites for malicious or inappropriate content, but Jackson says it will prove extremely difficult to police content that's being served by smart hackers. They may, for example, send Opera sanitized versions of their Web pages and reserve the malicious stuff for all other visitors.

Botmasters might start using Unite as a platform for saving data, or for running the command-and-control servers that are the brains of their networks of hacked computers, Jackson said.


Reprinted with permission from

IDG.net
Story copyright 2009 International Data Group. All rights reserved.

Jump to comments

browser wars TOC

Additional Resources

EFD vs. HDD - What You Need to Know
WHITE PAPER
Enterprise flash drives provide a new Tier 0 storage layer capable of delivering high I/O performance at a very low latency. Proper use of EFDs in an Oracle environment can deliver increased performance compared to fibre channel drives. Read the recommendations for identification of the best DB components for EFDs.
Gartner Research Report: Magic Quadrant for Application Delivery Controllers, 2009
WHITE PAPER
The market for products to improve the delivery of application software over networks remains dynamic and innovative. Vendors focused on solving enterprises' most-pressing application problems have become the top players.
Eight Criteria for Server Load Balancing
WHITE PAPER
Server load balancers are a simple yet highly effective means to scale an application environment while ensuring its availability. Today's solutions should also address application performance and security. Read about the top eight criteria you should consider when choosing a server load balancer and how Citrix NetScaler meets those requirements.

What People Are Saying

White Papers & Webcasts

Gene Kim's Practical Steps to Achieve and Maintain NERC Compliance
Learn seven steps operators can take to meet IT configuration requirements set forth in the NERC-CIP standards.  

The Workday User Experience Video
Watch Workday's Creative Director, Scott Lietzke, discuss the business-centered design philosophy at Workday.

Business Process Framework Demo
Learn about Configurable Business Processes and Calculated Fields. Watch Now!

Manager Experience Demo
Go beyond self-service solutions to perform more effectively. Watch Now.

Disaster Recovery & Cost Savings Zone
Thousands of customers world-wide have turned to virtualization solutions from Riverbed as a way to reduce costs.



IT Jobs