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posted by cmn32480 on Friday August 19 2016, @11:33AM   Printer-friendly
from the acrobatic-browsers dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Chrome, Firefox and other web browsers are plagued by vulnerabilities that can be exploited to spoof their address bar. Some of the affected vendors are still working on addressing the issues.

Pakistan-based researcher Rafay Baloch discovered that the address bar in Google Chrome, also known as the omnibox, can be tricked into flipping URLs.

The problem, which affects Chrome for Android, is related to how Arabic and Hebrew text is written from right to left (RTL). If an attacker's URL starts with an IP address and it contains an Arabic character, the URL's host and path are reversed.

For example, the URL 127.0.0.1/ا/http://example.com becomes http://example.com/‭ا/127.0.0.1 as it contains the "ا" character, the Arabic letter alef, which causes the URL to be rendered RTL. The method works with other Arabic characters as well, as long as they are the rightmost "strong" character – the numbers and the dots in the IP address are considered "weak" characters.

"The IP address part can be easily hided specially on mobile browsers by selecting a long URL (google.com/fakepath/fakepath/fakepath/... /127.0.0.1) in order to make the attack look more realistic," Baloch explained in a blog post. "In order to make the attack more realistic unicode version of padlock can be used in order to demonstrate the presence of SSL."


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  • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Friday August 19 2016, @12:27PM

    by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 19 2016, @12:27PM (#390038) Journal

    Visiting the blog post and clicking on the example links don't work for me.
    I am using Chrome v50.0.2661.102 m (64-bit)

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @12:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @12:43PM (#390040)

    It looks like they notified Google about this over a year ago and it is (presumably) fixed in their current version of Chrome. I would assume the same for Firefox based on it being named in the article & blog post. FTFBP:

    Variation of similar vulnerability has also been discovered in several other browsers that are still undergoing a fix there i am refraining from disclosing them. Details will be disclosed, once a fix has been landed.

    • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Friday August 19 2016, @01:02PM

      by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 19 2016, @01:02PM (#390043) Journal

      Ah, maybe I should RTFA properly next time

    • (Score: 2) by Zinho on Friday August 19 2016, @04:51PM

      by Zinho (759) on Friday August 19 2016, @04:51PM (#390150)

      Coincidentally, the change notes on today's Pale Moon update include:

      Security fixes:

              (CVE-2016-5251)Potential URL spoofing in the address bar.

      I didn't check vulnerability before the update, but it isn't vulnerable now.

      --
      "Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @08:15PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 19 2016, @08:15PM (#390245)

        The example URI [rafayhackingarticles.net] for vulnerable browsers didn't work on Pale Moon 26.3.0 (x86), either.

        Still, seems like as good a time as any to update...