Browser updates fix critical security issues

By Stephen Withers
Friday, 26 September 2008 09:10

Business IT - Open Source

There's a passel of browser updates waiting for you to download. They all involve critical security fixes, so sooner is probably better than later!

If there's another class of software that's as prone to security flaws as media players, then surely it is web browsers. Given the inherently Internet-facing nature of these programs, it shouldn't be surprising that researchers spend a lot of time digging around for flaws that could be exploited.

Firefox 3.0.2 addresses two critical, two moderate and one low vulnerabilities. The critical ones involve crashes in rendering code that could potentially be exploited to run arbitrary code.

Various other issues, including some associated with screen readers, are fixed in the latest version of Firefox. The 3.0.2 update also improves the open source browser's stability.

A number of Mac-specific issues are addressed, including non-functioning keyboard shortcuts and the inability to work with a user profile stored in an AFP directory.

Version 3.0.2 marks the official release of Sinhala and Slovene support, with beta support available for Bengali, Galician, Hindi, Icelandic, Kannada, Marathi, Telugu, and Thai. Certain issues affecting right-to-left locales have also been fixed.

For those who have for some reason chosen to stay with Firefox 2 (the lack of AppleScript support is holding back some Mac users), version 2.0.17 is a security-only update.

So what's fixed in 2.0.17, and which other browser has been updated? Find out on page two.