Interesting article from The Register:

Browser crashers warm to data fuzzing | The Register

Last month, security researcher HD Moore decided to write a simple program that would mangle the code found in web pages and gauge the effect such data would have on the major browsers. The result: hundreds of crashes and the discovery of several dozen flaws.

Fuzzing is an interesting concept. Basically, you throw random code at an application and see what crashes it.  This technique has been used with network protocols and network hardware for a while now, but turning it on browsers is a relatively new development.

Despite what you may think, while a preponderance of stablity flaws found were in Internet Explorer, there were several found in other browsers.  The article doesn’t specify what vulnerabilities were found in which browsers, but Microsoft of course is hedging for now.  They know that the wind of public opinion is directly aimed at thier faces, and they’re going to “look into it.”  In fairness, there hasn’t been an outbreak of anything particularly nasty in a while in terms of Microsoft vulnerabilities.

But what new dangers lie just below the surface that will be found by some enterprising young hacker looking to make his mark?  Time will tell, and it seems sooner rather than later with this new technique in play. . .