Vietnam mentioned in a Firefox - virus related news

It is the very fist time I read an article in Slashdot mentioning Vietnam. My beloved country drew attention from Firefox, as an user discovered Trojan in the Vietnamese language pack for the infamous browser.

The reporter, named Hai Nam Nguyen posted the news which was quickly confirmed by Firefox. A high-school friend of my is called Hai Nam Nguyen as well. He came to the national University, studying computer science. It could be him, I wonder. But of course, this is a very common name in Vietnam, and I haven't got hold of him to ask.

The Trojan, very likely written by a Vietnamese hackers, is essentially an ad generation. It does not seem to do other more malicious activities, but could well make Firefox open to more exploits. Now Firefox pulled the add-on off the website, but it has already raised some eyebrows. Yes, the idea of open sourced, free software is that everybody can hunt for malicious or buggy codes. And Firefox is undoubtedly the most successful open source software out there, but the software must go through a Quality Assurance process before officially release. However, all the plug-ins and add-ons for Firefox, as well as other less popular software, they did not catch much attention and there weren't clear QA or auditing process for them. Malwares might as well be abundant. Well, but that's is the risks that many (including I) are willing to take. At the end of the day, 0.01% of the users caring and reading the source codes can make big differences.