Navigation



Google Fixes Serious Vulnerability in Gmail

Last updated: September 9, 2015 | 5,794 views


Google started the new year by fixing a serious vulnerability in Gmail.

This was quite an interesting case and once again (as everything relating to web apps seems to be nowdays) it was an XSS flaw that allowed malicious attackers to steal your contact list, leading to some pretty bad information leakage.

Google has fixed a vulnerability in its popular GMail web mail service that creates a means for hackers to steal users’ contact lists.

The cross-site scripting flaw stemmed from the decision by GMail to store contact lists in a JavaScript file. GMail always saves contact lists as JavaScript code using the same URL, so a script featuring this URL can read out the fields of a users’ contact list. GMail failed to check what sites were attempting to run this “callback” function.

There was a previous very similar flaw on Google which effected computers with multiple Gmail users.

As a result users logged into GMail, or other Google services sharing the same login, are liable to hand over their contact list to spammers or other miscreants providing they are tricked into visiting a maliciously constructed website. Exploitation would have been as simple as fooling users into visiting a hostile website through spam messages sent to users’ email accounts.

Coders failed to take into account that it was a bad idea to save sensitive data as JavaScript, under predictable URLs, a problem Google watchers spotted shortly after Google made the coding changes last week

I do like Google though, they tend to fix things pretty fast!

Source: The Register

Share
Tweet
Share
Buffer
WhatsApp
Email
0 Shares
Posted in: Exploits/Vulnerabilities, Web Hacking

, , , , , ,


Latest Posts:


zBang - Privileged Account Threat Detection Tool zBang – Privileged Account Threat Detection Tool
zBang is a risk assessment tool for Privileged Account Threat Detection on a scanned network, organizations & red teams can use it to identify attack vectors
March 31, 2020 - 110 Shares
Memhunter - Automated Memory Resident Malware Detection Memhunter – Automated Memory Resident Malware Detection
Memhunter is an Automated Memory Resident Malware Detection tool for the hunting of memory resident malware at scale, improving threat hunter analysis process.
March 29, 2020 - 206 Shares
Sandcastle - AWS S3 Bucket Enumeration Tool Sandcastle – AWS S3 Bucket Enumeration Tool
Sandcastle is an Amazon AWS S3 Bucket Enumeration Tool, formerly known as bucketCrawler. The script takes a target's name as the stem argument (e.g. shopify).
March 24, 2020 - 114 Shares
Astra - API Automated Security Testing For REST Astra – API Automated Security Testing For REST
Astra is a Python-based tool for API Automated Security Testing, REST API penetration testing is complex due to continuous changes in existing APIs.
February 27, 2020 - 572 Shares
Judas DNS - Nameserver DNS Poisoning Attack Tool Judas DNS – Nameserver DNS Poisoning Attack Tool
Judas DNS is a Nameserver DNS Poisoning Attack Tool which functions as a DNS proxy server built to be deployed in place of a taken over nameserver to perform targeted exploitation.
February 19, 2020 - 258 Shares
dsniff Download - Tools for Network Auditing & Password Sniffing dsniff Download – Tools for Network Auditing & Password Sniffing
Dsniff download is a collection of tools for network auditing & penetration testing. Dsniff, filesnarf, mailsnarf, msgsnarf, URLsnarf, and WebSpy passively monitor a network
February 14, 2020 - 307 Shares


Comments are closed.