The Inquisitr » greasemonkey

Firefox Threat: “Rare” Malware Targeting Browsers

JR — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 17:20:05 +0000

Firefox users, be warned: A “novel” and “rare” type of malware floating around the Web may try to steal your banking passwords directly through your browser.

The program, called Trojan.PWS,ChromeInject.A, looks like a regular Firefox plug-in once it gets into your system. In fact, it’ll show up in the browser as part of Greasemonkey, the fully legit and quite handy customization tool.

This bad boy, though, won’t do you any good. Researchers at BitDefender found the malware will automatically run every time you start Firefox, then use JavaScript to identify any of about 100 different banking and financial sites you might surf to. Bank of America, Wachovia, and even PayPal are said to be included. Once it sees you on one of those sites, it’ll snag your login info and password, then send it all to a server in Russia.

Most people are being bitten by the ChromeInject bug by either downloading a program they think is legit, or by the phenomenon known as “drive-by download,” in which an e-mail or Web site installs the program without the user’s knowledge.

Antivirus programs will likely add protection against the bug before long — BitDefender says it already has — but in the meantime, the smartest thing to do is to keep up your own safeguard. Mozilla’s official add-on site has no instances of the bug, researchers say. Mozilla has been extra vigilant in its add-on scanning since some questionable code was found in a Vietnamese language pack on its site back in May.

BitDefender

Google Gets Greasemonkey, Sort Of

JR — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 19:16:09 +0000

Greasemonkey, the oh-so-handy customization tool for Firefox, is now coming to Google’s Chrome browser, too.

The expanded extension, first revealed on the Google Operating System blog, is becoming available before Chrome’s official extension API has even hit the masses. In what’s sure not to be a coincidence, Greasemonkey’s creator — Aaron Boodman — happens to work at Google as a Gears engineer.

As of now, the Greasemonkey Chrome version functions only on the developer edition of Chrome. It also has to be launched by adding “–enable-greasemonkey” on to the end of a target. One wonders, though, whether the support will eventually become integrated into a future Chrome build, given Boodman’s Google connection.

The news may serve as a comfort to any Chrome users who are also frustrated with the recent iGoogle change. A Greasemonkey script is already floating around to let you remove the new left-of-screen sidebar implemented into the portal page. While developed for Firefox, the function will presumably now carry over into Chrome as well.

Turn FriendFeed Into Your Start Page With These Greasemonkey Scripts

Duncan Riley — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 10:36:58 +0000

When I wrote my FriendFeed wishlist May 29 my number one wish was for FriendFeed to support custom tabs. This isn’t happening yet, and even if it did it would likely be for content currently supported by FriendFeed, not external services. But I still wanted tabs, and inspired by a Greasemonkey script called FriendFeed tabs (they use the plural, but it only delivers Techmeme in a tab) I started hacking away at the code to see if there was a way of adding other services. There was.

Here’s the scripts I’ve created so far. Each script can be used with each other and has been tested on Firefox 3 on the Mac and Windows. Before installing any of them you’ll need to install Greasemonkey if you haven’t already (the latest beta for FF3 RC 1 can be downloaded here). The last proviso is that unfortunately the tabs don’t create a second row at the moment so if you install every one and don’t have your browser at a decent width they’ll end up blocking existing FriendFeed tabs. This wasn’t the case for me, but it can happen, at least until I code a work around for it.

FriendFeed ReadBurner (download)
Adds a ReadBurner tab to FriendFeed

FriendFeed Plurk (download)
Adds a Plurk tab to FriendFeed

FriendFeed Twitter (download)
Adds a Twitter tab to FriendFeed. Note, that this is the actual Twitter page so many wont need this nor want it. However if you’re like me and have had to block tweets from FriendFeed it’s a work around that allows you to switch into Twitter from within FriendFeed.

FriendFeed Google Reader (download)
Adds a Google Reader tab to FriendFeed, inspired by Louis Gray.

FriendFeed Netvibes (download)
Make FriendFeed your start page and have Netvibes as a tab within

FriendFeed Facebook (download)

FriendFeed Techmeme (download)
Note: although the original script these are based on displayed Techmeme, it isn’t compatible with these scripts due to the way it displays tabs, so a new Techmeme script is required.

I’ll probably create some more in the coming days, and am happy to take suggestions on additional scripts and even code improvements. Enjoy + screen shots as follows: