Mozilla Fixes Major Security Issues

Mozilla has fixed a number of security vulnerabilities in the latest versions of its internet applications, including Firefox 14, Thunderbird 14 and Seamonkey 2.11.

Following the release of its Firefox 14 browser for desktop operating systems on Tuesday, Mozilla said it has removed security holes in the Gecko rendering engine that all the applications run, some of which it rated as “critical”.

The bugs fixed included a code execution problem related to javascript URLs, a JSDependentString::undepend string conversion bug that can be exploited to cause a crash and a same-compartment Security Wrappers bypass issue.

Critical use-after-free problems, an out-of-bounds read bug, and a bad cast in the Gecko engine that could lead to memory corruption have also been addressed, Mozilla said.

These bugs were deemed “critical” due to their vulnerability to being exploited remotely by hackers that could execute arbitrary code on an unsuspecting victim’s system.

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Firefox 4 Coming Next Week

Mozilla’s Firefox 4, the latest offering of the second most popular Web browser in the world, will be officially released on March 22, 2011.

It’s been a long time coming. The first Firefox 4 beta was released July 6, 2010. At the time, Mozilla was aiming to deliver a release candidate this past autumn.

Launching several months late isn’t ideal but Google’s release practices have made Firefox’s tardiness look worse. Google launched Chrome 5 on May 21, 2010. On March 8, 2011, Google released Chrome 10. Is Firefox now five generations behind Chrome? Hardly. The four major Web browsers — Chrome 10, Firefox 4, Internet Explorer 9, and Safari 5 — are more comparable and competitive than ever before.

Johnathan Nightingale, director of Firefox development, says Firefox has more than 400 million users worldwide and a 30% global market share.

NetApplications, an Internet metrics company, suggest that figure is closer to 22% and flat, if not falling. The most significant number Nightingale cites is six: “Firefox 4 is fast,” he said. “It’s blazing fast. Six times faster than any Firefox we’ve done before.”

Other browser makers make similar claims too, though some of those claims are more actively disputed than others, like Microsoft’s assertions about hardware acceleration.  Read more……