Hijacking browsers with BeEF
Web Heist
© Lead Image © kanokpol prasankhamphaibun, 123RF.com
Bits of JavaScript from a malicious website can put your browser in a trance. A tool called BeEF encapsulates that power in a most diabolical way, providing yet another reason to avoid unknown links and keep your browser up to date.
Web browsers have become so ubiquitous that they are installed on almost every Internet-connected device with a user interface. Because of this popularity, browsers are a very attractive target for attackers.
A 2023 article on the Dark Reading website [1] discusses a study by Spin.AI. The study analyzed around 300,000 browser extensions for several browsers that use Chromium under the bonnet, such as Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. A staggering 51 percent of the extensions presented a high risk to users. The study apparently found that the "extensions all had the ability to capture sensitive data from enterprise apps, run malicious JavaScript, and surreptitiously send protected data including banking details and login credentials to external parties."
The complexity of modern browsers increases their attack surface greatly, and the threats that their developers must counter should not be underestimated. For a number of years, both Firefox and Google Chrome have made use of sophisticated sandboxing techniques to provide a number of isolation advantages [2].
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