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As security bugs swarm around the Firefox browser, volunteer marketers want to shore up the open-source project's security message. With Monday's reports of the Mozilla Foundation's patches for significant new security holes that could let attackers install malicious code or steal personal data, Firefox partisans are finally acknowledging that the core sales pitch for their browser may be vulnerable. "The versions of Firefox up to version 1.0.3 have had terrible security risks," wrote one participant for the volunteer Firefox promotion, Spread Firefox. "I think these security risks have undermined the promise of Firefox as a more secure browser." While Firefox...

Multiple vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to install malicious code or steal personal data have been discovered in the Mozilla Suite and the Firefox open-source browser. Details of the nine flaws were published on Mozilla's security Web site over the weekend. Ian Latter, senior security consultant at Internet security specialist Pure Hacking, said most of the vulnerabilities are based on the way the applications handle JavaScript. "There are some permission issues related to running JavaScript at an escalated privilege level. They remove some of the security measures used to keep JavaScript sandboxed and allow it to potentially do malicious...

Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3 has just been released. A minor update, this version fixes a few security holes and some other bugs. If you're currently using Firefox 1.0.x, you want to install this release. Firefox 1.0.3 is a "branch build" serving as an interim update to Firefox 1.0. It addresses critical security and performance issues that resulted after the release of Firefox 1.0.This build is NOT to be confused with recent Mozilla 1.0+ nightly "trunk" builds.View: Release Notes | Neowin Forum Discussion Download: Mozilla Firefox 1.0.3

The Firefox browser continues to be a beacon for many Internet users.More than 2.6 million people visited the Firefox Web site in March to obtain more information about the open-source software and perhaps download it, according to Nielsen/NetRatings. That's up from 2.2 million in January and 1.6 million in February. Firefox has come on like gangbusters since last year, and now holds approximately 5 percent of the browser market. That's a small share, but the arrival of the browser--which has garnered attention in part as an alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer--has coincided with IE's dominant market share dipping below 90...

Startup Round Two on Tuesday officially opened for business, announcing plans to build software and services that the company hopes will someday make the Firefox browser consumers' control panel for all Web activity. With no products of its own yet, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based, company introduced itself to the public by unveiling its corporate website and announcing that it would assist developers of several Firefox add-ons currently available, including FlastGot, Bandwidth Tester and SwitchProxy. All of the software can be downloaded from the Round Two site. Round Two, comprised of four fulltime employees and 10 contractors, hasn't landed any venture...

This superior browser was created by the Mozilla Foundation, a not-for-profit group set up by AOL/Netscape refugees whose software benefits from the collaborative efforts of open source development. One of the best features of Firefox is tabbed browsing. You can keep open any number of Web pages and toggle from one to another by simply clicking on its "tab." This keeps your screen from being overrun by browser windows. No doubt Microsoft's Internet Explorer will soon offer this handy feature. But there's more to like about Firefox, including faster loading Web pages and virtual immunity from dreaded spyware and adware....

NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE - If your Mac is running OS X, you no doubt already know that Apple's operating system is immune to the Internet ailments that plague Windows, such as spyware, Web-page hijacking and, of course, Windows viruses. And you've probably had a chance to dump Microsoft's tired OS X browser, Internet Explorer, in favor of one the best Web browsers ever designed, Apple's superb Safari. But Safari has company. Firefox, the Web browser favored by millions of Windows users, is available in a version for OS X, as a free download from http://www.mozilla.org.I'm a big Safari fan, but...

The Mozilla Foundation is testing a patch to its Firefox browser that puts the kibosh on popup ads which have been slipping through the open-source browser's blocker. In recent weeks, said the group, advertising networks, in particular Fastclick, have started exploiting the fact that Firefox's popup blocker doesn't stymie Flash and Java popups by default. Firefox can disable such popups, but the current version has that feature turned off due to concerns that it would interfere with legitimate popup windows that some sites use. A manual method of changing the default to block plug-in popups was offered up by the...

   http://www.news.com/ Google enhances search for Firefox users By Ingrid Marsonhttp://news.com.com/Google+enhances+search+for+Firefox+users/2100-1032_3-5648788.html Story last modified Thu Mar 31 10:41:00 PST 2005 Google has added a new feature to its search engine that allows Firefox users to obtain search results more quickly. Reza Behforooz, a software engineer at Google, announced Wednesday that the search engine now pre-loads the top search result into the cache of Mozilla browsers. "Now Google's faster than ever on Firefox and Mozilla browsers," Behforooz said in a posting on the company's blog. "When you do a search on these browsers, we instruct them to download your top...

As Mozilla and Microsoft executives argue about which browser -- Firefox or Internet Explorer -- is more secure, fans of the former have numbers on their side, a Belgian security consultancy said this week. According to Brussels-based ScanIT, users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) were "unsafe" 98 percent of the time during 2004, while Mozilla users -- which would include those using Mozilla and Firefox -- were "unsafe" only 15 percent of last year. ScanIT determined the unsafe periods by examining the life spans of vulnerabilities in IE, Mozilla, and Opera -- a Norwegian browser that has a nearly...

What's New 1.0.2 Firefox 1.0.2 is a security and stability update that is part of our ongoing program to provide a safe Internet experience for our customers. We recommend that all users upgrade to this latest version. Here's what's new in Firefox 1.0.2: Several security fixes .

Firefox explorers By Nigel McFarlaneMarch 22, 2005 Bill Robertson... "Firefox has the best pedigree, with an active engineering community, wide community support and long history." Photo: Marco Del Grande When Bill Robertson decided last year to switch 450 workers and 100 desktops at De Bortoli Wines to the open source Firefox web browser, he had the company's future in mind.In moving to the free Firefox, he did more than just install a web browser that rivals Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which comes for free with every PC running the Windows operating system. The CIO defined a radically new desktop interface for...

Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble Posted by: Mike Griffin on March 11, 2005 @ 10:45 AM FireFox may be in danger of "rotting from the inside out" according to industry experts including one of the developers on the FireFox review team. Lack of attention by developers and money from supporters may end the meteoric rise of the browser where it is today. Forget about Microsoft coming out with IE 7 to challenge Firefox. If Firefox rots from the inside out; the way so many other programs, like the original Netscape browser, did; then it's not going anywhere much beyond where...

Battling browsers are back. Just as in the 1990s, when Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator fought each other for supremacy, today Mozilla's Firefox browser is trying to gain traction over IE. This latest skirmish, however, goes beyond just browsing the Web. Microsoft's security problems have left an opening for upstarts like Firefox and could lead to other products taking market share from the software giant, say experts at Wharton. As far as browsers go, customers are disgruntled with Microsoft. The nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, formed in July 2003 with funding from America Online's Netscape unit to promote open-source Web software,...

Late last night, while working on a friend's laptop computer, I noticed something odd. I am posting the story here with visual evidence to see if anyone else has experienced this. The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 8100 running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Among other tasks, I was stripping out his Norton 2003 Anti-Virus (which decided not to work) and installing AVG Anti-Virus software. After that was done I opened his Internet Explorer and went to Google.com and searched on "Firefox". The first result had the title "Rediscover the Web". I clicked on the link and was taken to...

Before you start reading, fire up the printer, and get the scissors. You may want to clip this one out and give it to your friends and colleagues who are still in Windows land. There are times in life when you actually hear words coming out of your mouth and even as they're coming out, you realize how stupid they sound. I realize that in my own personal and professional life, this sort of thing happens a bit more than the statistical average, but this morning I uttered words that sounded so completely insane, I had to share them. After...

After several days of confusion about the future of its open-source browser suite, the Mozilla Foundation called it quits, and announced that it would stop development of its namesake. All development efforts will instead be focused on Firefox, the foundation's stand-alone browser, and Thunderbird, its e-mail client. Supporters of the Mozilla browser suite, however, aren't ready to throw in the towel, and it appears likely that it will live on under a new name and under the aegis of an independent developer community. The Mozilla suite, now five years old, is a collection of browser, e-mail client, and HTML editor,...

Development problems concerning the Mozilla Suite have led to some soul-searching in the Foundation, with some calling for Firefox to be spun off The survival of the original Mozilla Suite is very much in doubt as developers question whether the success of stand-alone products Firefox and Thunderbird mean the death of the integrated suite that spawned them. Mozilla developers on the 'netscape.public.mozilla.seamonkey' newsgroup have been in fierce debate over the future of the open source suite since the minutes of the 28th February mozilla.org staff meeting were posted online on the 7th of March. At that stage the demise of...

Microsoft Internet Explorer is reported prone to a remote buffer overflow vulnerability. This issue presents itself when the application handles a malformed CSS file. A typical attack would involve the attacker creating a Web site that includes the malicious CSS file. The attacker may then entice a vulnerable user to visit the site. If successful, this attack may result in granting the attacker unauthorized access to the affected computer in the context of the user running Internet Explorer.

Just a day after one security firm warned of a vulnerability in Firefox and Mozilla, a rival disclosed that another eight threaten the open-source browsers. The Danish security firm Secunia on Tuesday laid out the flaws, most of which could be used by criminals to spoof, or fake, various aspects of a Web site, ranging from its SSL secure site icon to the contents of an inactive tab. Other bugs can be exploited remotely by hackers able to introduce code of their own choosing on the vulnerable machine, possibly taking control of it or giving them access to files. For...