Firefox plugin decodes malicious Web sites

From InfoWorld: A computer security researcher has released a plugin for Firefox that provides a wealth of data on Web sites that may have been compromised with malicious code.

The plugin, called Fireshark, was released on Wednesday at the Black Hat conference. The open-source free tool is designed to address the shortcomings in other programs used to analyze malicious Web sites, said Stephan Chenette, a principal security researcher at Websense, which lets Chenette develop Fireshark in the course of his job.

Hackers often target legitimate Web sites with code that can either infect a machine with malicious software or redirect a user to a bad Web page.

Websense specializes in detecting Web pages that have been infected, as many site administrators don't know that their sites are harmful to visitors or have difficulty reverse-engineering malicious code. Fireshark will "show you the exact details of a mass compromise," Chenette said.

Over the last 12 months, the number of newly compromised Web sites has increased about 225 percent, Chenette said.

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