Topic: Mozilla Again Patch Firefox 3.6 - now 3.6.8

[Samker]

For the second time in two months, Mozilla on Friday rushed out a fix for its Firefox browser to patch a problem with an update issued just days before.

Mozilla shipped Firefox 3.6.8 on Friday to patch a single security problem and deal with what Mike Beltzner, director of Firefox, called "a stability problem that affected some pages with embedded plug-ins."

The company had released Firefox 3.6.7 two days earlier .

Mozilla patched one critical security bug in the newest update, according to an advisory also published Friday. "In certain circumstances, properties in the plug-in instance's parameter array could be freed prematurely, leaving a dangling pointer that the plug-in could execute, potentially calling into attacker-controlled memory," the warning read: http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/2010/mfsa2010-48.html

The bug surfaced in one of the 16 patches that Mozilla applied to Firefox earlier in the week.

Details of that vulnerability, and the stability problem that Beltzner mentioned, were not available to the public as of Saturday.

Several Firefox users, however, had filed numerous reports to the browser's support forum of problems with Adobe's Flash Player plug-in after updating to Firefox 3.6.7.

"I updated Firefox from 3.6.2 to 3.6.7 and I REGRET IT!," wrote a user identified only as "Steve" in a support forum message posted Friday morning. "I can't watch YouTube. Every time the video is about to start Firefox freezes and I can't do nothing besides going into Task Manager and killing it from there. THIS SUCKS!"

Friday's patch-and-release was the second in two months for Mozilla. Just three days after updating Firefox to version 3.6.4 in late June, Mozilla delivered another update because people playing Farmville complained that their browser was shutting down the Facebook game. The company said that a new "out of process plug-ins" feature, designed to keep the browser running when a plug-in crashed, was kicking in too quickly.

The older Firefox 3.5 browser, which was upgraded to version 3.5.11 last Tuesday, is not affected by the security bug or the plug-in stability problem.

Users can update to Firefox 3.6.8 by downloading the new edition or by selecting "Check for Updates" from the Help menu in the browser: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all.html

(PCW)

[AllSecurityUp]

This is always the balance.  I always believe it's best to keep products updated, especially with security updates for web browsers since they are usually the main program accessing the internet.

However sometimes updates can be unstable and the decision to update has to be balanced.

I still believe it's better to update and use rollback techniques (eg: system restore, image backups) where possible.

One of the good things about Mozilla is the community is large and seems quick to provide feedback.  Also, Mozilla seems quick to respond to these issues.

[AllSecurityUp]

I find the comment on problems playing videos interesting when one of the features for the yet to be released Firefox 4 is possibly the ability to play most videos formats out of the box.

[Samker]

... security updates for web browsers since they are usually the main program accessing the internet.

and in most cases, best way for malware creators to "infected" PC's (another big one is Adobe...) 

We all need to take care and immediately Update browsers and Adobe products.

[AllSecurityUp]

Excellent point Samker.  Adobe have released a lot of security updates recently and since Adobe products often interact with the web then they also should be kept up to date.  This would include other similar AddOns.

[Samker]

This would include other similar AddOns.

 

[bBbLaHhH]

I am still learning about the different features that the many browsers have to offer.

However, my friend who really computer programming savy has told me that google offers a much more stable platform to it's users.  I asked him why and he started explaining and shooting all these terms that flew above my head =S.  Anyways, I guess I'm wondering on your thoughts as to why chrome or other browsers may be better than firefox.

I do however find that chrome has less pop ups than firefox... maybe it's just me =/