Firefox authentication box said to be vulnerable to spoofing for phishing attacks

The issue, which exists in the latest version of Firefox 2.0.0.11, allows an attacker to create what appears to be a dialog box from a trusted website.

Firefox fails to display characters in the “www-authenticate” header realm value after the last set of double quotes and fails to sanitize single quotes and spaces, making it possible for an attacker to create a specially crafted realm value from a well-known website, according to Raff.

An attacker can target an end-user with a specially crafted webpage with a link to a trusted website, then open the page in a new window, and eventually return the specially crafted authentication response. A fraudster can also embed an image pointing to their own server to return a basic authentication response through an email, RSS feed, forum, blog or social networking page, according to Raff.

A Mozilla representative could not be immediately reached for comment.

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