tabbed paranoia

[the_hofers]

Hi, just another paranoid question, I hope: In tabbed browsing, is there any danger in surfing one tab openly while doing encrypted online banking on another? There's an unsurmountable wall between the two, is there? Thx.

[communist]

Yes, at least thats how it should be.

[ArcticFox]

If the online banking is securely encrypted and theres a padlock on the browser window then no amount of tabs will be able to get into it.

[foxyshadis]

All the SSL in the world doesn't protect you from a browser-based exploit or sniffers/keyloggers. The general name for this exploit is a cross-tab vulnerability.

I believe old versions of firefox (when it was firebird) and opera 7 had tab exploits like this come to light, but that was a long time ago and since then it's mostly the odd social-engineering attacks, like this (http://secunia.com/advisories/12712/). Even that was a year ago.

[UofC]

Safe bet is, don't do it. Keep your banking separate from the rest. After all there is a reason that you can not surf the net on ATMs.

In browsing sites, they can always look at your cookies and other cached files. You can limit your risk with firewall, antivirus, and anti-spyware applications. It does not matter if you are using tabs or not; the files are saved on the hard drive. I could go on but will not.

If there is indeed paranoia in your blood, start the computer fresh, clean out the cache of your browser, clean out the cookies, and do your banking. Do not run other Internet based applications while banking.

Once done clear the cache, cookies, and reboot. To take it a step further run an anti-spyware app like spybot to clear out any possible bugs after you are done.