CERT-In warns Indian users against browser vulnerabilities

Computer Emergency Response Team of India (CERT-In), Government organization which works in security related issues, preventing hacking and phishing, and other threats have issued a security warning against the major browsers. The agency said that the Mozilla Firefox, Thunderbird and SeaMonkey could be damaged by remote attacker. The damage may be memory corruption, unwanted downloading of files, loss of information and cause of denial of various services on the Internet to the user.

The remote attack is done to bypass certain security restrictions, disclose potentially sensitive information, gain escalated privileges, execute arbitrary code and causes denial of service condition on the affected system.

"The two web browsers are an important tool for Internet surfing among Indian online consumers. The anomalies have been detected recently and it would be advised that users upgrade their existing versions sooner than later. These activities are mischiefs on part of hackers or they are harmful viruses," a cyber-security expert told

Considering the seriousness of these suspicious virus-based activities, CERT-In has instructed the Indian internet users that the personal versions of Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome should be upgraded on their computers.