Malware Vulnerability In Firefox Vietnamese Language Pack And My New Laptop

A lot was said about a vulnerability found in the Vietnamese Language Pack For Firefox 2. Most of the articles discussing the vulnerability reported it as a full virus infection of the Vietnamese Language Pack. What most articles did not tell you was that the vulnerability was not actually due to a virus in the language pack but a left over snippet of code left after the virus was removed from the language pack. Anyone who had installed the Vietnamese language pack had not infected their systems with the Xorer Trojan as some pundits had made it sound. But, by having the language pack installed users did potentially open themselves to malware being able to rewrite advertisements on pages they viewed in Firefox.

This is a bit of an old issue. The immediate resolution was to simply disable the Vietnamese language Pack if you had installed it. Mozilla later on came out with a new version of the language pack that sis not have the remnant code.

So if this is an old issue, then why is it important? I have read a lot of the articles referencing the Vietnamese Language Vulnerability in Firefox 2. Most of them failed to mention that the issue was not an actual virus infection but vulnerability due to not all of the infected code not having been removed. I think this is a prime example of why, in these situations you need to look further than first person reporting before you come to a conclusion on a particular issue.

So how did I get on the Vietnamese Language Pack issue in the first place? I recently bought a new laptop. And, I am in the process of loading all the software that I have become so dependent on for all my Internet marketing and search engine optimization work. Most of these tools are Firefox add-ons like SEO Quake and SEO for Firefox. I have really become heavily dependent on these tools.

Although, I wanted the same capabilities on my new laptop that I had on my old desktop, I wanted to reduce the amount of different software running on the system. Since, most of the add-ons that I use on a daily basis have both Internet Explorer and Firefox versions; I thought I might eliminate using Firefox.
When I first read about the Vietnamese Language Pack vulnerability I thought twice about using Firefox on my system.

But, I really like Firefox and the huge development community that has grown around it. So , I decided to do a bit more investigation. So I decided to read a little further into the issue and found that there was never a fully operational virus in the language pack but a remainder code snippet. If I would not have read further into the situation I may have decided to not use Firefox any more. In which case, I would have missed out on a lot of fantastic capabilities.

So, I guess the moral of the story is to not take everything you read on the internet at face value. Dig a little deeper, get a little more information and, in the long run, you will be a lot happier about the decision you made. I know I am.

Edit:

Thought I would add a note here. When I bought my new computer I realized that I really needed to make my work area more efficient and comfortable. I was absolutely clueless on how to create a good at home work environment and knew very little about ergonomics. But then i cam across this site that was really helpfull in understanding ergonomic chairs. There is a great overview of the different types of ergonomic office chairs as well. I knew that sitting at the computer was not the best thing for my body. But, I had no idea that it would have such negative affect on my health. I finally, settled on a Herman Miller chair called the Aeron chair. Actually I bought a used aeron chair. That was the only way I could afford a designer ergonomic chair.

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