Browser Helper Objects commonly called as BHO are, as name
suggests, objects or components that helps you to utilize the browsers
capabilities. It’s basically a dll (Dynamic Linked Library) that gets
registered into your system, of course with your permission.
It’s basically a add-in to your browser. The most common
browser helper object is the Google toolbar in Internet Explorer. You can
search your queries directly from the toolbar. BHOs are used extensively by the
marketing folks to pull in the advertisers. What they actually do is create
BHOs that can track the traffic in one site. This piece of information is very
useful for the advertisers looking for the users to a particular website. They can track the information such as the
kind of users, what they are interested in and so on.
There are lots of such BHOs today, collecting, tracking one
information or the other. Despite of being
so helpful, a few can be malicious as well. Some BHOs gets installed in your
system and then can take advantage of your browsing data. For example some BHOs
are mainly interested in bank sites, where in the BHOs trap the user’s credentials
and send it across to its owner/s. I think
you would know the rest of the story!
The BHO api (application programming interface) exposes loop
holes and hooks that allows these malicious BHOs to access the page’s DOM
(Document Object Model) which facilitates the BHO to control the page
navigation
.
Microsoft provides apis for creating your own
BHO.
In order to make sure your system does not fall prey to
these malicious BHOs, you need to make sure you permit only trusted installations
on your system.
Remember SECURITY is incomplete without “U”….
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