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Is Mozilla’s Firefox 5 a More Stable Browser Than Its Predecessor?

Mozilla Firefox 5.0

Mozilla Firefox 5.0

This week’s release of the Firefox 5 browser came shockingly fast for Mozilla. Firefox 4 came out of beta barely 3 months ago–the previous numbered release, Firefox 3, was released way back in 2008.

A quick look at the features and improvements in Firefox 5 however reveals what the Mozilla foundation did to accomplish the fast release: There are some significant upgrades under the hood, but this is really more of a 4.1 release than a full new version of the browser.

However, the big news is that the release of Firefox 5 may finally solve the stability issues users have complained about since the beta builds of Firefox 4. When the Mozilla foundation released the last major overhaul of Firefox back in March, it was a huge step forward for the browser. The update brought with it a host of new features like improved tab navigation and the ability to sync bookmarks across multiple computers.

Perhaps most importantly, Firefox 4 improved the speed of the browser which had been lagging in recent years.

However, Firefox 4 also brought a lot of complaints about random crashes. A user named bigdaddyken on Mozilla’s support forums posted that “firefox 4 crashes constantly, on opening, different pages, etc. Old firefox worked fine.” More than one thousand users reported the same issue, and this report was only one of many crash complaints on the forums.

PCWorld users have also had problems with the browser. In a comment on our early hands-on with Firefox 4 report, user xvMATTLEEvx said “Sure it has added features but that is just to keep up with everyone else it’s nothing innovative like Mozilla used to be. On top of that Firefox 4.0 is suffering the same crashes and memory spikes Firefox 2.0 suffered. I am talking without add-ons not with add-ons.”

Firefox 5 Feature List

The list of Firefox 5′s new features isn’t exactly designed to thrill. It’s headed by “added support for CSS animations” and features other improvements like “improved discoverability of the Do-Not-Track privacy feature preference” and “improved spell checking for some locales.”

Clearly the features listed here aren’t the real news in Firefox 5. Users will probably be a lot more excited by the list of hundreds of bug fixes that come along with Firefox 5. While there is some reason to worry that this rapid update strategy brings as many problems with it as it solves, with any luck, these bug fixes will make Firefox 5 as crash-proof as it is fast.

Today, we asked our Facebook page users if they had any similar problems with Firefox 4 and quickly got more than 40 responses like Irving Cool who says “FF4 crashes a lot :S” or Wali Khan who stated his “New Firefox crashes every 5 minutes.”

Let’s hope Firefox 5 really solves the problems.

Get Firefox

If you need a fresh new copy of Firefox, you can get it here:

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Donbot dumps fake AV spam – pitches gambling site instead

Donbot dumps fake AV spam – pitches gambling site instead

Botnets pitching online casinos

Donbot – aka Bachsoy and Buzus – is known to be capable of generating an incredible volume of spam. At its height in the summer of 2009, the swarm was noted as generating around 800 million spam messages a day from around 125,000 infected PCs.

This equates to around 1.3% of global spam volumes, although some reports have noted spikes reaching the 4.0% mark.

According to David Broome, a researcher with M86 Security, Donbot’s spam deluge paused recently for 15 minutes and came back with a gambling pitch.

The pitch, he says in his latest security blog, is one his security colleagues have seen for over a year on and off in their spam traps.

“It is designed to encourage the reader to gamble money on roulette with what is presented as a winning strategy. Conveniently, a link to an online casino is provided to the user in order to use this strategy and make easy money”, he reports.

Following the link, says Broome, leads to a web splash page where clicking any button on the page – including the language flags at the top – starts a download of Casino-Online.exe.


The WHOIS information for the casino domain lists it as having been registered at namecheap.com on the 24th of May 2011.

“So, if there was any doubt to the possible legitimacy of this casino, here’s the proof that it is in fact an illegitimate operation. The domains that lead to the casino software are changing regularly and being spammed out fresh”, he said.

After downloading the Casino-Online.exe binary and scanning it through the VirusTotal test site, 4 of 42 anti-virus packages detected it as various malware executables.

“When we ran the Casino-Online.exe in our environment and set up an account, no unusual traffic was seen going out. While it may not be malware in the traditional sense, it’s certainly operating in a highly dubious fashion. We normally advise against clicking links in spam messages, so downloading and executing arbitrary executable files is a definite no-no”, he said.

The information gathered during the account creation process, he explained, is quite thorough, which is also concerning given what data could be collected and used for future spam campaigns, or sold.

“Assuming the casino isn’t rigged, the odds are still stacked in favour of the house. Despite their description of the strategy, the odds for Red/Black in roulette are not actually 50/50, instead being 48.6/48.6/2.8 – the 2.8% being for the 0 that is also on the wheel”, he observes.

This means, he goes on to say, that regardless of a bet on red or black, you have a 51.4% chance of losing the bet.

Whilst this may seem reasonable odds, he adds, it gives the casino enough of a winning margin that – given enough time they will eventually come out on top.

“Using the strategy outlined in the spam message of multiplying a bet 2.5 times after every loss, it would take only 10 losses in a row for you to have lost $6,000, and 13 losses in a row for you to have lost just shy of $100,000″, he says.

“Without an unlimited bankroll you will surely come to grief at some point”, he adds.

from http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/18297/donbot-dumps-fake-av-spam-pitches-gambling-site-instead/

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Top 10 Malware Threats reported by GFI Software for February

According to GFI Application, a trend observed since last summer continued, with lots of of the same types of Trojan horses continuing to dominate the threat landscape. GFI’s statistics revealed that Trojans made up three of the top 10 malware threats in February 2011. Topping the list, Trojans detected as Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT accounted for 22.97 percent of total detections, holding its spot as the number one threat.

GFI Application has announced the top 10 most prevalent malware threats for the month of February 2011 as detected by scans performed by its anti-malware solution, VIPRE Antivirus, & its antispyware gizmo, CounterSpy.

These Trojans are downloaders associated with rogue security programs known as Fake Antivirus application, sometimes known as “scareware”. One time they are on a use’s process, these programs perform a fake scan of a victim’s computer for malware then display false warnings that the machine is infected in an try to persuade victims to buy fake security application.

The top 10 results represent the number of times a specific malware infection was detected in the coursework of GFI’s VIPRE & CounterSpy scans that document back to GFI’s community of opt-in users. These threats are classified as moderate to extreme based on process of installation among other criteria established by GFI Labs.

Top 10 Detections for February 2011 as reported by GFI Software:

1
 Trojan.Win32.Generic!BT Trojan
22.97%
2
 Trojan-Spy.Win32.Zbot.gen Trojan
3.46%
3
 Trojan.Win32.Generic.pak!cobra Trojan
2.89%
4
 Zugo LTD (v) Adware
2.52%
5
 Fraudtool.Win32.Securityshield.ek!c (v) Trojan
2.00%
6
 Trojan.Win32.Generic!SB.0 Trojan
1.72%
7
 INF.Autorun (v) Trojan
1.66%
8
 Worm.Win32.Downad.Gen (v) Worm
1.48%
9
 Pinball Corporation (v) Adware
1.19%
10
 Exploit.PDF-JS.Gen (v) PDF exploit
0.83%

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Some Symptoms of Spyware, Adware and Malware Infection

Symptoms of Spyware

Symptoms of Spyware

The symptoms of a malware infection vary.

Your web browsing speed may be slow. Your computer,  in general,  may be slower that it was and may take much longer to start up than it used to.

It is likely Internet Explorer is modified.  Your homepage and/or search page may be changed,  new favorites that you didn’t create may appear, a new toolbar may appear or you may end up at unknown web sites when you try to do a search.

To prevent you from undoing the browser modifications made by a malware program,  some of them remove or disable the Internet Options from the Tools Menu and from the Control Panel.   If you try to reset your home page and can’t,  it’s likely due to malware.  If you can’t get to anti-virus or security web sites,  but can get to other web sites,  it’s likely due to malware.

Adware will bombard you with pop-up ads. More malicious programs serve up a constant barrage of ads for pornographic web sites.   That’s on top of the pop-ups from the web sites you’re viewing.   If you see pop-up ads even when you are offline,  it’s due to malware.

Actual Spyware (as opposed to other malware) has to phone home to report what it found.   If your firewall provides outbound protection you may see the ‘phone call’ and be able to stop it.

Malicious software may also shut down or disable your anti-virus program or your firewall program. It may prevent the normal activity of your anti-Spyware software.   It may prevent you from accessing Task Manager or msconfig or regedit.

Adware programs may create new icons on the Windows desktop,  task bar,  or system tray.   They may also create popup windows that you are unable to close.   If your computer mysteriously dials the phone on its own,  it may be infected with a porn dialing program.

Once it is installed on the user system,  it’s difficult to uninstall,  you can’t run Windows updates anymore or install other antivirus products. A rise in fake antivirus offerings on Web sites around the globe shows that scammers are increasingly turning to social engineering to get malware on computers rather than exploiting holes in software.   Fake antivirus is easy money for scammers.
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from » http://www.michaelhorowitz.com

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