XML based software interfaces and browser hijaking

["Carey Myers" <cmlist170 () hotmail com>]

Recently I have spent a significant amount of time restoring a few computers 
of friends/family that have had the following problems:

One or more of any number of downloader trojans were installed, presumably 
from using an unpatched browser to access a malicious site.
Their browsers were severely hijacked.

Neither machine was current on virus definitions.  Neither machine could be 
updated for virus definitions or scanned because the AV software was using 
an XML interface with a modified Internet Explorer browser window, which was 
immediately redirected to the hijacked browser web page.  The same went for 
any "scan my computer" function I tried.  Only by installing an alternate 
browser and doing a scan from online (importing AV defs from another PC was 
not possible as there was no PC available) was I able to identify and remove 
the virus.

Internestingly, corporate editions of the same brand of AV product still use 
a standard window-based interface.

To extrapolate further, any software product with an XML interface would 
become unusable, making the impact of browser hijacks deeper and more 
damaging.

I was just wondering if this XML trend seems as potentially dangerous to 
others as it does myself.
With current virus definitions, the AV product would have prevented the 
infectious components from being written to hard disk.  But with computers 
shipping with 3-month trial subscriptions to AV software, it is very easy 
for AV to become outdated.

I don't want this to break down into "Users should take care of their 
computers or get off the net" debates, I just want to see what others think 
about XML interfaces for software (especially AV) products and the 
consequences of this shift in the consumer market.

Is XML interfacing a potential security liability?  Should AV vendors 
protect their user interfaces better?


CM

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