Exploiting Windows XP using the Java Signed Applet Attack

Java Applets 

A Java applet is a small application which is written in Java and delivered to users in the form of bytecode. The user launches the Java applet from a web page, and the applet is then executed within a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) in a process separate from the web browser itself. A Java applet can appear in a frame of the web page, a new application window, Sun's AppletViewer, or a stand-alone tool for testing applets.

The Applets are used to provide interactive features to web applications that cannot be provided by HTML alone.They can capture mouse input and also have controls like buttons or check boxes.

An untrusted applet has no access to the local machine and can only access the server it came from. This makes such an applet much safer to run than a standalone executable that it could replace. However, a signed applet can have full access to the machine it is running on if the user agrees.

This attack will create a malicious Java applet hosted on the attacker's machine within a local copy of a famous website (Gmail, Facebook, ...) and start a listener. Once the victim will connect to us, he/she will bind to us and a session will be created on the attacker's machine.