Firefox patches "critical" vulnerabilities

Angus Kidman
Thursday, 21 December 2006 01:25

Your IT - Home IT

Users of popular open source browser Firefox are being urged to update the product to eliminate a bug which could allow hackers to gain control of their PC.

A "critical" security advisory from the Mozilla Foundation, which manages the development of Firefox and its sibling products such as the Thunderbird mail client, notes that the most recent upgrades of Firefox (to versions 2.0.0.1 and 1.5.0.9) include several enhancements designed to improve software stability problems noted in earlier releases.

"Some of these were crashes that showed evidence of memory corruption and we presume that at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code with enough effort," the advisory said.

Users of Thunderbird could also be affected by the problem if they have JavaScript enabled, though this is not a recommend setting, the advisory noted.

Firefox has developed a reputation for being more secure and stable than Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which remains the dominant browser client. However, security experts attribute that in part to the smaller user base for Firefox making it a less attractive target for hackers, and Mozilla has always advised regular patching of the product.

Mozilla recently released an alpha version of Firefox 3.0, but that release is aimed at developers rather than general consumers.