Hackers attack Mozilla site to spread spam

[Osiris]

Hackers attack Mozilla site to spread spam

Hackers attacked a site promoting Firefox last weekend in order to commandeer it to send spam, the Mozilla Foundation said on Friday. The attack was limited to community marketing site SpreadFirefox.com. In a statement, the Mozilla Foundation said the unspecified security vulnerabilities were exploited to mount the attack.

SpreadFirefox.com was taken down after the attack was discovered on Tuesday, 12 July but has now been restored online. The Mozilla Foundation said the break-in on 10 July by unknown attackers did not affect other mozilla.org web sites or Mozilla software.

We don't have any evidence that the attackers obtained personal information about site users, and we believe they accessed the machine to use it to send spam. However, it is possible that the attackers acquired information site users provided to the site," it said.

Users of the site are advised tochange their Spread Firefox password and the password of any accounts where the same password is used. The Mozilla Foundation has apologised for the security flap and promised to bolster its security defence in order to defend itself against further attacks.

"The Mozilla Foundation deeply regrets this incident and is taking steps to prevent it from happening again. We have applied the necessary security fixes to the software running the site, have reviewed our security plan to determine why we didn't previously apply those fixes in this case, and have modified that plan to ensure we do so in the future," it said.