May 8, 2008

Mozilla shipped Firefox plugin with malware attached
Virus scan missed Xorer Trojan in Firefox upload
Robert McMillan

Mozilla has admitted shipping a Firefox plugin that had virus-infected code in it.

Mozilla security chief Window Snyder said in a blog posting last night that because of a virus infection, the Vietnamese language pack for Firefox 2.0 was polluted with adware.

Mozilla said that a malicious program inserted adware code into a Firefox plugin that has been downloaded thousands of times over the past three months.

Firefox developers have now scanned all of their plugins. The Vietnamese language pack is the only one that had this kind of code, she said.

The open-source browser maker does not know how many people were infected with the adware, but the plugin was downloaded more than 1,200 times in the past week and has been downloaded 16,667 times since November.

"Everyone who downloaded the most recent Vietnamese language pack since February 18, 2008 got an infected copy," Snyder wrote.

/quote

If it is a virus, it is "transmissible." While only the Vietnamese language pack was infected at time of download, anyone who's communicated with anyone who's communicated with anyone who knows someone who might have used the Vietnamese package would be advised to scan with a current AV.

The Trojan carried by the virus apparently is adware, and may redirect you to sites that annoy. The article doesn't indicate a spyware content, or anything destructive to data on infected machines; but it's apparently quite recently discovered so it may have "features" unknown.

John