TUCoPS :: Unix :: General :: imute-1.htm

Vulnerability
 interMute
Affected
 Those running interMute
Description
 John Temples found following. interMute is a junk filter/privacy
 enhancer for web browsers. It runs as either a privileged Java
 applet within your browser, or as a standalone Java application.
 interMute operates as a proxy server listening on port 4444, and
 is meant to operate dedicated to a single user. It correctly
 rejects any service requests from IP addresses not on the local
 host. However, it has no mechanism to determine whether requests
 coming from the local host originated from the browsing user, or
 some other user. The interMute proxy has a "home page" from
 which the user can configure it and view filtering statistics for
 the current session. A local user on a UNIX host can connect to
 another user's interMute proxy, giving him full control over
 interMute. Thus various attacks and intrusions are possible:
 1) The sites which were acted upon by interMute are listed in
 the "statistics" area, thus revealing part of the user's
 browsing history;
 2) interMute can be configured to chain to another proxy, thus
 allowing all browsing activity to be redirected and logged
 without the user's knowledge;
 3) interMute can be configured to load a home page which could
 contain hostile Java and/or JavaScript code;
 4) Various denial of service attacks are possible by
 reconfiguring interMute's filters.
Solution
 Nothing yet.