Firefox update guards against critical flaws

Patch issued, calamity averted

By John Leyden • Get more from this author

Posted in Enterprise Security, 21st December 2006 14:56 GMT

Free whitepaper – PowerEdge M1000e, M600 and M605 spec sheet

Firefox users need to upgrade their browsers following the discovery of multiple security vulnerabilities.

The flaws affect both Firefox 1.x and the latest Firefox 2.0.x releases. Surfers need to upgrade to version 1.5.0.9 or 2.0.0.1 of the browser, respectively. Users also need to upgrade to a new version of the Mozilla email client, Thunderbird 1.5.0.9, for similar reasons.

The nine security bugs (reported by various security researchers) create a means for hackers to swipe sensitive information, run cross-site scripting attacks, or gain control of vulnerable systems, security notification firm Secunia reports.

The bugs involve flaws in Firefox's JavaScript engine, the feed preview feature of Firefox 2.0, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) processing code, and various buffer overflow flaws in other components of the browser software, as explained in greater detail here. ®

Free whitepaper – Out-of-box comparison between Dell, HP, and IBM blade servers