Navigation



Serious XSS Flaw in Google Desktop Allows Data Theft

Last updated: September 9, 2015 | 5,047 views

Google has fixed a security flaw in its desktop search software that created a means for hackers to rifle through personal files on users’ PCs.

A failure in Google Desktop to “properly encode output containing malicious or unexpected characters” created a means for hackers to cross from the web environment to the desktop application environment.

So if you are running Google Desktop we suggest you update it ASAP.

The attack, outlined in a paper (PDF) released by the firm, uses a cross-site scripting (XSS) flaw in the Google Desktop application in conjunction with any other XSS flaw in the Google.com domain to install malicious JavaScript on the user’s computer. Using the technique, an attacker could create a JavaScript program that Google Desktop repeatedly runs, allowing the attacker to search a victim’s computer using terms most likely to dredge up interesting data.

Google released an updated version of Google Desktop that fixes the local cross-site scripting flaw earlier this month, but many users may not have gotten the patch, said Danny Allan, director of security research for Watchfire. Because of the popularity of Google Desktop, there could be a large number of users with vulnerable systems.

Read More:

Google Desktop flaw allows data theft
Google patches critical desktop flaw
Serious Flaw in Google Desktop Prompts Patch

Share
Tweet
Share
Share
Buffer
WhatsApp
Reddit
Flip
Vote
Email
0 Shares
Posted in: Exploits/Vulnerabilities, Hacking News

, , , ,


Latest Posts:


ZigDiggity - ZigBee Hacking Toolkit ZigDiggity – ZigBee Hacking Toolkit
ZigDiggity a ZigBee Hacking Toolkit is a Python-based IoT (Internet of Things) penetration testing framework targeting the ZigBee smart home protocol.
August 23, 2019 - 53 Shares
RandIP - Network Mapper To Find Servers RandIP – Network Mapper To Find Servers
RandIP is a nim-based network mapper application that generates random IP addresses and uses sockets to test whether the connection is valid or not with additional tests for Telnet and SSH.
July 27, 2019 - 105 Shares
Nipe - Make Tor Default Gateway For Network Nipe – Make Tor Default Gateway For Network
Nipe is a Perl script to make Tor default gateway for network, this script enables you to directly route all your traffic from your computer to the Tor network.
July 18, 2019 - 232 Shares
Mosca - Manual Static Analysis Tool To Find Bugs Mosca – Manual Static Analysis Tool To Find Bugs
Mosca is a manual static analysis tool written in C designed to find bugs in the code before it is compiled, much like a grep unix command.
July 11, 2019 - 243 Shares
Slurp - Amazon AWS S3 Bucket Enumerator Slurp – Amazon AWS S3 Bucket Enumerator
Slurp is a blackbox/whitebox S3 bucket enumerator written in Go that can use a permutations list to scan externally or an AWS API to scan internally.
July 1, 2019 - 274 Shares
US Government Cyber Security Still Inadequate US Government Cyber Security Still Inadequate
Surprise, surprise, surprise - an internal audit of the US Government cyber security situation has uncovered widespread weaknesses, legacy systems and poor adoption of cyber controls and tooling.
June 27, 2019 - 41 Shares


Comments are closed.