Cut-&-Paste Attacks with JAVA

This paper describes malicious applets that use Java’s sophisticated graphic features to rectify the browser’s padlock area and cover the address bar with a false https domain name. The attack was successfully tested on Netscape’s Navigator and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer; we consequently recommend to neutralize Java whenever funds or private data transit via these browsers and patch the flaw in the coming releases. The degree of novelty of our attack is unclear since similar (yet nonidentical) results can be achieved by spoofing as described in [6]; however our scenario is much simpler to mount as it only demands the inclusion of an applet in the attacker’s web page. In any case, we believe that the technical dissection of our malicious Java code has an illustrative value in itself.