-=PCTechTalk=- Mozilla Patches Firefox Hole
- From: "David F. Wooledge" <wooledge001@xxxxxxxx>
- To: "@freelistts PCTechTalk" <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2005 22:25:35 -0800 (PST)
Mozilla Patches Firefox Hole
Wed Mar 23, 4:00 PM ET
Paul Roberts, IDG News Service
The Mozilla Foundation issued a patch this week for a previously undisclosed
hole in its popular Firefox Web browser and is encouraging Firefox users to
download the software update as soon as possible.
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The nonprofit organization released Firefox 1.0.2 (available as a free
download) to fix a buffer overflow vulnerability in a Firefox feature for
processing GIF image files. The patch is the second security patch issued in
less than a month, but the foundation reassured users that the browser's open
source platform is secure, and says it does not know of any active exploits for
the hole.
The GIF processing hole was discovered by Internet Security Systems (ISS) and
makes Firefox users who are running earlier versions of the browser vulnerable
to buffer overflow attack, according to a statement released by the Mozilla
Foundation.
ISS discovered the hole in a review of the Firefox source code, which is
available on the Internet.
In a statement attributed to Chris Hofmann, the foundation's director of
engineering, the discovery of the hole and release of a patch shortly after are
evidence that the open source software model is safer and more secure than
closed-source commercial code, because it is "scoured by thousands" of
contributors, developers and professionals, and "not just the company's
development team."
Cause for Concern?
In February, the Mozilla Foundation released Firefox 1.0.1 to fix 17 security
vulnerabilities in Firefox, including changes to guard against spoofing of Web
addresses and the security indicator on Web sites. However, the foundation is
not planning to adopt a regular patch release cycle, which Microsoft uses, and
will continue to issue updates as they are needed, Hofmann says in a statement.
Firefox has been gaining in popularity since the first full version of the
browser was released in November. More than 27 million copies of Firefox have
been downloaded since then, pushing Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) share of
the browser market below 90 percent for the first time in years.
Firefox installations were 5.7 percent of the U.S. browser market as of
February 18. IE controlled 89.9 percent, according to statistics released by
Web tracking company WebSideStory.
However, Hofmann denies that Firefox is becoming a more attractive candidate
for hackers as it gains market share.
"There is this idea that market share alone will make you have more
vulnerabilities. It is not relational at all. Not being in the operating system
and not supporting Microsoft's proprietary Active X are phenomenal advantages
to us," he says in a statement.
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