Pratica di Shadowing: Firefox and Tor hit with 9.8 critical level exploit - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

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Last week, we talked about a major exploit discovered in the Chromium-based Arc browser, and all the smart people in the comments were like, thank god I use Firefox.
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Unfortunately, the turns have tabled, and now another 9.8 critical vulnerability has crashed into a second browser, this time Firefox.
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And this time, it's been actively exploited in the wild.
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Now, before you go in the comments and say, thank god I use Tor, it even affects everybody out there doing totally not illegal stuff on the Tor browser, which itself is Firefox-based.
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This time, though, it wasn't a silly mistake involving a misconfigured Firebase security rule, but rather a used-after-free flaw on their implementation of the CSS animation timeline property.
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They left a pointer dangling, which is far more difficult to detect and audit, and in this case could be used by bad guys to take full control of your browser with remote code execution.
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If you're running one of these Firefox versions, you're probably already dead, but if not, you'll want to update immediately.
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In today's video, you'll learn all about the interesting and terrifying world of use-after-free exploits.
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It is October 15th, 2024, and you're watching the Code Report.
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Before we get started, though, I have some other bad news for internet browser users, specifically those on Chrome using uBlock Origin, or any other ad blocker for that matter.
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We all knew this day was coming, but shots were fired yesterday when this ominous message appeared on the plugin's install page, warning users that uBlock's execution date is drawing near.
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Now, this is all part of a grand conspiracy to get you to watch ads and be happy, and Google is achieving that by updating the manifest for plugins from version 2 to version 3,
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which eliminates the web request API where plugins can see all the incoming network requests
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so they can block all the garbage from known ad servers.
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I made a video on this a while ago if you want all the details, but now let's get back to Firefox.
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Slovakian company ESET has been credited with discovering and reporting the vulnerability.
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Where an attacker is able to achieve code execution by exploiting a use after free flaw in the CSS animation timeline.
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I use the animation timeline all the time to create scroll animations on websites that nobody asked for, and never would have expected it to be an attack vector.
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But to understand why this is so bad, we need to understand what use after free actually means.
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Exploits like this have affected all the other browsers, including Chrome and Safari, and useAfterFree was even responsible for the iOS jailbreak of 2019.
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The Firefox browser is free and open source, but you won't find it on GitHub.
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Its code is actually self-hosted and uses Mercurial for version control.
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It's primarily written in C++, although more and more of its code is now being written in Rust, a language that was created by a software engineer at Mozilla.
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Firefox itself contains over 30 million lines of code, because building a browser is extremely complex.
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At a high level, here's how a use-after-free flaw could be introduced.
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In the C code, let's imagine we need to allocate some memory for a value.
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To achieve that, we create a pointer and then use malloc to allocate memory for it.
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From there we can assign a value to it and use it in our program to do something useful, like in the case of Firefox, render an animation.
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At some later point, when we no longer need that memory, we'll want to deallocate it with free.
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But now we have a problem called a dangling pointer.
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The memory is free, but the pointer itself still exists and is now being used in our code with undefined behavior.
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If an attacker can figure out how to get some malicious code into that memory, it can cause the program to crash, or even worse, remote code execution.
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Now, this could be easily fixed by setting the pointer to null or a different object, but in the case of Firefox, the issue is likely a lot more complex and above my pay grade.
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It's still being analyzed, so there's not a ton of detail, but Mozilla stated that they have had reports of the vulnerability being exploited in the wild.
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The good news, though, is that it's completely fixed, and it doesn't appear anything catastrophic has happened.
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In addition, if you're using the anonymous Tor browser, an attacker could take control of your browser, but probably not totally de-anonymize you, assuming you're on Tails OS,
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which recently merged with the Tor browser as one project.
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Now, another browser that was affected by all this is Zen, which is an awesome open source project based on Firefox.
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They quickly update it to the fixed version, but it just goes to show how one little flaw can affect a lot of downstream projects.
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But if your goal is to write robust, bulletproof code, you'll need to start with computer science fundamentals.
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And you can start doing that today for free thanks to this video's sponsor, Brilliant.
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This has been the Code Report, thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one.

Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione

Questa lezione di conversazione di livello B2 si basa sul video “Firefox and Tor hit with 9.8 critical level exploit”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: code, browser, Firefox, pointer, animation. Questo video contiene 47 frasi e 991 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 4:27. Chi parla va veloce, circa 223 parole al minuto: aspettati suoni legati e ridotti. Solo il 80% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese, quindi il lessico è impegnativo.

Vocaboli chiave di questo video

Le 15 parole più avanzate del video, con pronuncia e significato:

ParolaPronunciaSignificato
exploit sostantivo/ˈɛksplɔɪt/gesto eroico, gesta eroiche
pointer sostantivo/ˈpɔɪn.təɹ/bacchetta
animation sostantivo/ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/ravvivamento, animazione
flaw sostantivo/flɔ/fessura, cricca
attacker sostantivo/əˈtækɚ/attaccante
vulnerability sostantivo/ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/vulnerabilità
timeline sostantivo/ˈtaɪmˌlaɪn/linea temporale, linea del tempo
allocate verbo/ˈæl.ə.keɪt/stanziare, assegnare
dangle verbo/ˈdæŋ.ɡəl/penzolare
interactive aggettivo/ˌɪn.tɚˈæk.tɪv/interattivo
anonymize verboanonimizzare
bulletproof aggettivo/ˈbʊlɪtpɹuf/antiproiettile
ominous aggettivo/ˈɑmɪnəs/predittivo
terrify verbo/ˈtɛɹɪfaɪ/terrorizzare
undefined aggettivoindefinito

I phrasal verb che sentirai

ParolaSignificato
figure out verboscoprire, rendersi conto

La grammatica di questo video

Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:

StrutturaNel video
Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fawere fired · has been credited · being written
Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adessohave tabled · has been credited · have affected
Frasi relative who / which + frase — un’informazione in più su una persona o una cosadangling, which is · Zen, which is

Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione

Chi parla usa 13 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come you're, you'll, doesn't. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.

  • I suoni “sh” e “zh”: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, malicious /məˈlɪʃəs/, subscription /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/
  • Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, vulnerability /ˌvʌln(ə)ɹəˈbɪlɪti/, interactive /ˌɪn.tɚˈæk.tɪv/, deallocate /diːˈæləkeɪt/, catastrophic /ˌkætəˈstɹɑfɪk/

I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:

  • Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: exploit /ˈɛksplɔɪt/, allocate /ˈæl.ə.keɪt/, interactive /ˌɪn.tɚˈæk.tɪv/, bulletproof /ˈbʊlɪtpɹuf/, deallocate /diːˈæləkeɪt/
  • /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: animation /ˌæn.ɪˈmeɪ.ʃən/, attacker /əˈtækɚ/, allocate /ˈæl.ə.keɪt/, dangle /ˈdæŋ.ɡəl/, interactive /ˌɪn.tɚˈæk.tɪv/

Come esercitarsi con questo video

  1. Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
  2. Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
  3. Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come exploit, pointer, animation.

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

Tecnica dello shadowing: leggi la guida completa passo dopo passo →