Web Browser Attacks: Understanding the Threats and Vulnerabilities

This report provides an overview of web browser attacks, detailing their nature, the problems they cause, and the technologies that attackers utilize. It discusses various types of web browsers and vulnerabilities, emphasizing the impact of attacks on society and the technological world. The report highlights the importance of understanding these threats for maintaining online security. It covers the relevant technologies like the internet and computer systems. The author concludes with a reflection on the lessons learned and the importance of being aware of these threats. The report also discusses the negative impact of web browser attacks on society due to the spread of modified information. This report is a valuable resource for understanding the risks associated with web browser attacks and the importance of staying informed about them.

Running head: WEB BROWSER ATTACKS
Web Browser Attacks
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Executive Summary
The main aim of this report is to understand the basic concept of the attacks on web browsers.
Web browser is the application of software, which allows all the users to interact with all the
contents of a particular web page. A web browser is utilized for presenting and retrieving all
types of information and resources. The report helps to identify the problems faced by the users
and all the relevant technologies that help a hacker to attack on the web browsers. Moreover, the
impact of these attacks are also mentioned here.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Discussion........................................................................................................................................3
Web Browser Attacks..................................................................................................................3
Problems..................................................................................................................................4
Relevant Technologies.............................................................................................................4
Impact of Web Browser Attacks..............................................................................................5
Most Important Lesson............................................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Introduction
Web browser is the application of software, which allows all the users to interact with all
the contents of a particular web page (De Groef et al., 2012). A web browser is utilized for
presenting and retrieving all types of information and resources. This application is present on
WWW or World Wide Web. The resource is recognized by a specific URL or Uniform Resource
Identifier. A URL can be an image, other pieces of contents, videos or even a web page. These
web browsers are extremely helpful for searching or retrieving any information for the modern
world (Hong, 2012). Although these web browsers are extremely safe, there is always a high
chance of attacks in these browsers.
The following report outlines the detailed discussion on the attacks in the web browsers.
The report describes about then definition, problems, and relevant technologies of web browser
attacks. These attacks have an extremely strong impact on the society and the technological
world. The description is provided in the following paragraphs.
Discussion
Web Browser Attacks
Web browser is an application that is utilized for retrieving and searching any type of
information. There are various types of web browsers like Internet Explorer, Google Chrome,
Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Safari and many more. The fastest browsers are the Google Chrome,
Mozilla Firefox and Opera; however, the speed of Internet Explorer is much slower than the rest
(Virvilis et al., 2015). The first ever browser was invented in the year 1990 by Sir Tim Berners
Lee. It was known as the World Wide Web and later was named as Nexus. There are

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vulnerabilities present in the completely patched browsers. These are vulnerable to several types
of exploitations and attacks. These type if attacks occur when the browser plug ins are not
patched up completely.
Problems
Several problems can occur if web browsers are attacked or exploited by the intruders or
hackers. These types of attacks mostly occur due to the bad websites (Barua, Zulkernine &
Weldemariam, 2013). The security coding of the web applications are extremely poor and this
allows the hacker or intruders to enter into the websites and enable all sorts of vulnerabilities
within the application. Moreover, the hacker or the attackers become successful in compromising
a huge number of all the trusted websites for delivering the erroneous or malicious information
or metadata to all the users (De Groef et al., 2012). The main weapon of the attacker is by adding
several scripts to the web site without changing or modifying its appearance. These scripts
redirect the users to any other web site and the user do not even have any idea about it. This
redirected web sites cause malicious programs to be automatically downloaded in the computer.
These types of programs are normally designed to enable the remote control of the computer of
the users (Rauti & Leppänen, 2014). The moment the user click on the exploited web site, the
attacker gets all the information from that computer.
Relevant Technologies
Technologies are the most relevant and important thing for the progress of world. There
are certain technologies that are involved in web browser attacks (Lekies et al., 2012). The main
technologies that are required for this type of attack are as follows:

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i) Internet: The most important and the most required technology for web browser
attacks is the Internet (Luo et al., 2012). The hacker or the intruder cannot conduct any type of
web browser attacks without the help of the Internet. Internet is considered as one of the major
advantages, provided by technology. This is the most utilized technology in the modern world.
Every individual requires Internet in their every day like. Web browser helps to search or retrieve
all types of information (Dougan & Curran, 2012). The hacker often gets the opportunity to
exploit the web browser with the help of Internet.
ii) Computer Systems: This is the second most important and required technology for any
type of attacks or exploitations in the web browsers. The hacker or the intruder requires a system
to conduct his attack (Rauti & Leppänen, 2014). The systems can be anything like a computer, a
laptop, and tablets or even up graded smart phones. They can hack any device and enter and
exploit the system to conduct his attacks in the web browsers.
The above mentioned two technologies are the most required and important technologies
for any type of attack and exploitations in the web browsers.
Impact of Web Browser Attacks
The web browser has an extremely strong impact on the society in today’s world. Every
human being utilizes web browsers for their searching and retrieval of information. If the web
browsers would be exploited by the hacker or intruder, the users would be getting the modified
and changed information (Lekies et al., 2012). This can be harmful and degradable for their
career and work place. Therefore, it can be said that attacks on the web browsers have a negative
impact on the society.

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Most Important Lesson
I have got the lesson that this type of attacks is extremely vulnerable and dangerous for
the society and the technological world. The hackers or the intruders often intercept the contents
of the web browsers and the users get the intercepted version. I have also learnt that the hackers
get all the information about the user as soon as the user clicks on the attacked or exploited web
site.
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above discussion it can be concluded that web browsers are the best
searching applications of software that are utilized for the retrieval of information easily. It
allows all the users to interact with all the contents of a particular web page. A web browser is
utilized for presenting and retrieving all types of information and resources. This application is
present on WWW or World Wide Web. The resource is recognized by a specific URL or
Uniform Resource Identifier. A URL can be an image, other pieces of contents, videos or even a
web page. These web browsers are extremely helpful for searching or retrieving any information
for the modern world. Although these web browsers are extremely safe, there is always a high
chance of attacks in these browsers. The above report describes about the probable causes and
effects of the attacks on the web browsers. This turns out to be extremely risky and the
dangerous for the users, who are using it. The report also provides the lesson that is learnt from
these attacks.

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References
Barua, A., Zulkernine, M., & Weldemariam, K. (2013, July). Protecting web browser extensions
from javascript injection attacks. In Engineering of Complex Computer Systems
(ICECCS), 2013 18th International Conference on (pp. 188-197). IEEE.
De Groef, W., Devriese, D., Nikiforakis, N., & Piessens, F. (2012, October). FlowFox: a web
browser with flexible and precise information flow control. In Proceedings of the 2012
ACM conference on Computer and communications security (pp. 748-759). ACM.
Dougan, T., & Curran, K. (2012). Man in the browser attacks. International Journal of Ambient
Computing and Intelligence (IJACI), 4(1), 29-39.
Hong, J. (2012). The state of phishing attacks. Communications of the ACM, 55(1), 74-81.
Lekies, S., Heiderich, M., Appelt, D., Holz, T., & Johns, M. (2012). On the Fragility and
Limitations of Current Browser-Provided Clickjacking Protection Schemes. WOOT, 12.
Luo, T., Jin, X., Ananthanarayanan, A., & Du, W. (2012, October). Touchjacking attacks on web
in android, ios, and windows phone. In International Symposium on Foundations and
Practice of Security (pp. 227-243). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Rauti, S., & Leppänen, V. (2014). Man-in-the-Browser Attacks in Modern Web
Browsers. Emerging Trends in ICT Security, 469-480.
Virvilis, N., Mylonas, A., Tsalis, N., & Gritzalis, D. (2015). Security Busters: Web browser
security vs. rogue sites. Computers & Security, 52, 90-105.