Firefox under fire from multiple security bugs

The Mozilla Foundation has warned of a slew of critical vulnerabilities to its popular Firefox web browser and related products. The most serious of the flaws create a means for hackers to inject malware onto vulnerable systems. Other flaws would make it easier to construct phishing attacks or swipe sensitive information from …

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for being more secure than ie ...

No better than microsoft ... Never liked firefox it's a pile o cr*p. U should be using Opera!

[Will]

Why the ebay.de advert?!

Ok, Im confused!

An article about browser vulnerabilities and mid way though it a strange advert to buy Alpine stereos from ebay.de

Have we been exploited, or am i missing the gag?!

[Barry Mung]

Not the full story...

Your article fails to point out that Internet Explorer has more than twice as many unpatched vulnerabilities than Firefox!

Unpatched Vulnerabilities

IE: 36% Firefox: 15%

(Source: Secuna Stay Secure)

So..how about pointing this out to your reader, that Firefox remains the more secure browser?

[Liam the lemming]

Way to sensationalise, guys.

Surely they'd only be "under fire" if the vulnerabilities in question were:

- being complained about by all and sundry

- not being reported - or worse, ignored - by the Mozilla Foundation

- left unpatched, regardless of the risk they represent.

And yet - goodness! - none of the three seem to apply. Did the Foundation do something unspeakable to John Leyden? It'd explain the slant of the article...

[Ian Thomas]

Cannot be directly compared with IE

Remember that Mozilla's bug finding & fixing process is much more open than those of Microsoft and other companies, therefore bugs which might have been quietly fixed in a private organisation become public knowledge with Mozilla.

The good news is that Firefox 1.5.0.2 has no known vulnerabilities rated higher than 'Less Critical' (2/5)

[Anonymous Coward]

what up with the microsoft thingy?

in addition to the ebay ad, what's up with the Microsoft logo?

why blue?

when did this comment thing start?

why wasn't i told?

sheez. go away for 4 days and the world turns upside down.

[Anonymous Coward]

With one breath, with one flow

Synchroicity is a wonderful thing. I was only just thinking that you should allow comments on your site.

[PJH]

Comment Spin

Barry:

>Unpatched Vulnerabilities

>

>IE: 36% Firefox: 15%

>

>(Source: Secuna Stay Secure)

Ian:

> The good news is that Firefox 1.5.0.2 has no known

> vulnerabilities rated higher than 'Less Critical' (2/5)

And this makes Firefox better than software that doesn't have vulnerabilities how exactly?

Microsoft is crap at fixing vulnerabilities, but the fact that Firefox still has known ones doesn't make it necessarily any better. Critical or 'Less Critical' (How does that work by the way. Isn't that like being 'a little bit pregnant?')

[Will]

Mircosoft thingy

El Reg change their pages if they are paid enough cash to do so!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you discussing the ad?

Hello - we have firefox - adblock extension anyone?

[Nathar Leichoz]

is this journalism?

Are you trying to post facts about the situation or are you trying to spread your usual hate-speech against Firefox and Blake by comparing them to IE? Anyone can make things sound good with excuses and wild explanations, but it takes real guts for a journalist to be brave enough to just post facts and statistics.

[Gavin Barker]

Opera...

Someone suggested Opera. Surely as more and more people use it and it has a bigger market share more holes will then be discovered there aswell.

It is inevitable that software will have bugs in it - it is how the people responsible get on and fix them that is important. In that sense Firefox seems to be slighlty better/faster than MS at the moment.

Has anyone made a 'The Register' extension yet to help make pages readable by stripping out the overpowering ads?

[tyler mercier]

Less is More

By PJH

Posted Tuesday 18th April 2006 13:59 GMT

>Critical or 'Less Critical' (How does that work by the way. Isn't that like being 'a little bit pregnant?')

No, that's more like being 'a little bit shot' instead of bleeding to death from an IE blast to the face.

[Tristan]

Ad? What ad?

What ad would this be? There isn't one, and there isn't a gap where one might have been....

oh, wait, I have adBlock. Silly me.

[Christian Dannemann]

Keep your knickers on :-)

Well well well, now the Opera / IE / Moz users come out of their holes to defend "their" browser ...

I've been using Moz for a couple of years now - and yes, mainly security issues why I have done so.

Any software product has its vulnerabilities, that is unavoidable. I think the speed with which the patches are released still make my choice the right one.

BTW - so Opera never had and never will have vulnerabilities?

Christian

[adam]

life on the edge :D

they wont stop me using it, just use some common sense about the websites you visit and youll drop the chances of being exploited.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Comment spin

>> The good news is that Firefox 1.5.0.2 has no known vulnerabilities rated higher than 'Less Critical' (2/5)

> And this makes Firefox better than software that doesn't have vulnerabilities how exactly?

We're not talking about any old software here, we're talking about a browser. A browser with no vulnerabilities is, IMO, an impossible goal, but that doesn't stop publishers from striving to get as close to that goal as possible. What differentiates the publishers is how close they get to that goal, not whether or not they achieve it. Closed source, proprietary software with no public audit of code will never get anywhere near as close to that goal as Open Source Software does, be it in terms of the number of vulnerabilities in a finished product or of the speed with which security holes are plugged once discovered.

[Mike Powers]

The thing is, Firefox is being _sold_ as invulnerable

The chief talking-point for Firefox zealots is that Firefox DOES NOT HAVE the security problems that plague IE. Now we've learned that Firefox does, in fact, have security problems. The Firefox zealots' response: "Well, the problems aren't AS BAD as the kind you get with IE." Sort of a "No True Scot" type of response.

[Godwin Stewart]

Re: The thing is, Firefox is being _sold_ as invulnerable

First of all, firefox isn't being "sold" at all. It's freely available.

Secondly, it isn't being presented as "invulnerable", but as "far less vulnerable". There's a big difference.

Thirdly, when vulns are discovered (not if, when) they're fixed far quicker than they would be in the closed-source, proprietary software world.