Screwed by Design

I’ve noticed quite a few Google searches come in looking for things like ‘firefox errors myspace’ and other keywords lately that aren’t necessarily pointed at useful information. So here’s a little recap with some additional information.

Firefox crashes or hangs on Myspace
(keyphrase: running myspace in firefox, firefox randomly closes)
If Firefox crashes/hangs on Myspace or any other site, most of the time it’s simply due to poor code or an incomatible plugin on the page. But there are a few things you can do to remedy the problem:

• Upgrade to Firefox 1.5. A lot of changes have been made since the 1.0.x branch to make Firefox more stable when encountering poor code.
• Report the problem. If Firefox still crashes after installing 1.5 and you want to lend us a hand, just follow these steps:
  1. Make sure Talkback is installed
  2. Reproduce the crash and copy down the Talkback ID
  3. Report the problem to Bugzilla providing the Talkback ID and as much information as possible.

Details about the Internet Explorer 0-day Exploit
(keyphrase: internet explorer exploit)
Like the last entry, there’s still no patch available. Disabling JavaScript will effectively block this exploit, but will severely limit your browsing experience. Using a different browser is a great way to maintain functionality while keeping safe.

Firefox 1.5 Build Identifier
(keyphrase: build identifier firefox 1.5)
Firefox 1.5 and 1.5RC3 are the same build. So if you’re running RC3, there’s no need to upgrade.
These are 1.5’s user agent strings:

Windows

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

Mac OS X

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

Linux

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8) Gecko/20051111 Firefox/1.5

Second network card: $4.95
30 minutes spent figuring out how to send additional traffic over said NIC: $0
ourTunes: $0
‘Borrowing’ roommate’s network jack to create a theoretical total throughput of 200mbps: $0

Achieving nirvana on a level never before thought possible: Priceless

An exploit for all versions of Internet Explorer was discovered in the wild yesterday. The original exploit discovered and reported to Microsoft in May would only hang IE, but this new discovery allows an attacker to execute any program on your computer. Using a weakness in the way IE handles the JavaScript window() function, an attacker could for example open the command prompt with a command to delete the contents of your My Documents directory. The possibilities are almost endless to what this could be used for. No patch has been issued by Microsoft at this time, but running as a limited account under XP will reduce the ability of this to make drastic system-wide changes.

There is also another solution which works just as well 😉