Enterprise open source Toolkit

Spread Firefox hacked again

Tom Espiner ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 04 Oct 2005 17:25 BST

The community marketing site for the Mozilla foundations popular open source browser has been hacked for the second time in a matter of months.

Spread Firefox came under attack earlier this week, according to the Mozilla Foundation which sent an email to members of the site alerting them to the attempted hack.

"The Spread Firefox Team became aware this week that the server hosting Spread Firefox, our community marketing site, has been accessed by unknown remote attackers who attempted to exploit a security vulnerability in TWiki software installed on the server," said Mozilla in the email.

Mozilla believes that no sensitive information was taken, but has shut down the site until 15 October.

"We have scanned Spread Firefox servers and at this time do not believe any sensitive data was taken, but as a precautionary measure we have shutdown the site and will be rebuilding the Web site from scratch," Mozilla said.

Users trying to access the site currently get this message: "SpreadFirefox is currently unavailable. We currently plan to make SpreadFirefox available again around October 15th. Keep checking in because it might be up before expected."

Spread Firefox users were warned that their passwords would need to be changed, but this will not be possible until the site is back up.

This is the second time in four months that hackers have broken into Spread Firefox. In July attackers exploited an unpatched security vulnerability, and triggered a similar wave of warnings to users.

Mozilla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.