WWW electronic commerce and java trojan horses

A general method is given, window personalization, that can thwart or prevent this attack on a consumer's machine using Java or similar remote execution facilities.

Abstract

World Wide Web electronic commerce applications often require consumers to enter private information (such as credit card numbers) into forms in the browser window. If third parties can insert trojan horse applications onto a consumer's machine, they can monitor keyboard strokes and steal private information. This paper outlines a simple way to accomplish this using Java or similar remote execution facilities. We implemented a simple version of this attack. We give a general method, window personalization, that can thwart or prevent this attack. 1 Introduction Computer security experts have long recognized the threat of trojan horse programs [6, 15, 13]: programs that appear to perform one function while actually performing a second, unwanted function. A particular concern arises from the presentation of an interface to a user or consumer. Since human users identify applications by their interface, a human user may be unable to distinguish a legitimate program from a rogue program's ...