Several security issues have been addressed with the latest release of the open source browser.
The Mozilla Foundation has followed up on a couple of major security issues by releasing a new version of the Firefox browser. The IDN buffer overflow vulnerability has been corrected, along with a few other security problems.
Recently, Symantec noted in its review of computer security that nearly twice as many vulnerabilities were reported for Firefox than for Internet Explorer through the first half of 2005, and Mozilla has been working to counter perceptions of Firefox being less secure than previously thought.
Mozilla recommends all Firefox users upgrade to the new version, regardless of the underlying operating system being used. There are still some outstanding issues with Firefox that will occur on all systems, so users will want to check the release notes.
One issue concerns extensions and themes. Upgrading Firefox will disable all extensions and themes. The browser will attempt to determine if existing extensions are compatible with it, or if newer versions can be found from their creators.
“This is because Firefox changes from release to release and as such the ways in which some extensions integrate changes, meaning there can be problems when running an older extension with a newer version of Firefox,” the release notes state.
Users who have extensions or themes that do not update and won’t work with 1.0.7 should contact the author of that code and ask them to update it.
David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business. Email him here.
