full-disclosure - Unofficial Microsoft patches help hackers, not security

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Date: Thu Jan  5 15:36:17 2006
From: bkfsec at sdf.lonestar.org (bkfsec)
Subject: Unofficial Microsoft patches help hackers,
	not security

Morning Wood wrote:

>>everyone knows the best official patch is firefox
>>
>>    
>>
>umm, no
>firefox presents a save or open dialog box.
>if the user belives it to be a image he / she is
>intended to view, they will simply "open".
>thus, windows gladly passes the extention
>handler to WMF, game over.
>or, they will "save" and simply passing the
>mouse over the icon will trigger the exploit,
>again... game over
>
>  
>

I would like to point out, however, that getting a dialogue box is still 
infinitely superior to simply browsing and getting owned. 

You can't stop stupid people from downloading and running trojans, no 
matter what they're called.  (I once saw someone run a file called 
"fucku_up.exe" -- and warning lights never went off in his head.)  
However, a dialogue box warning someone before they run a potentially 
dangerous filetype is a lifesaver to the paranoid and the security 
conscious.

Maybe not the best patch, but firefox still provides more security than 
IE does in this matter.

             -bkfsec