Firefox Vulnerability

[bennyk]

"A flaw has been discovered in the popular open-source browser Firefox that could expose sensitive information stored in memory, Secunia has warned."

cnet article here

[img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]

bk

[AncientPC]

Boo, so disable Javascript for the time being.

Tools -> Options -> Web Features -> Uncheck "Enable Javascript".

[bennyk]

yeah, i got that.

just annoying, especially after we were all like "firefox is invincible"

also many web pages will not render correctly without javascript...
bk

[AncientPC]

Perhaps, but nothing is invulnerable. It's just a matter of time / popularity before a security flaw is found.

People bash MS all day for security flaws, but it's because the software is used so much that we find these security flaws. Any software used on that mass scale with that many lines of code will always have its security flaws discovered.

[Pov]

[ QUOTE ]
just annoying, especially after we were all like "firefox is invincible"

[/ QUOTE ]

Nothing is really invincible. IE has been around for a long time so hackers have had a long time to figure out possible vulnerabilities. Mozilla has had the opportunity to learn from what they've seen go wrong with IE and prevent those hacks from being there in the first place. IE is by far the market leader as well so hackers target it to get the best audience for their hacks. If Firefox takes over as the dominant browser then hackers will target it instead though it will never be as vulnerable as the "old school" browsers because of the learning mentioned above.

Stepping stones. Expect the next version of IE to be even better than Firefox then the browser after that to be better yet, etc. The problem is to add new features is to add new vulnerabilities so we'll probably never have an "invincible" anything that is useful just like the vehicle you drive can only be safe to a certain degree before becoming useless, etc.

[bennyk]

[ QUOTE ]
Expect the next version of IE to be even better than Firefox then the browser after that to be better yet, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

nah. IE will never be as customize-able as other browsers IMO. Opera and Firefox are better because the user can setup things to make it better for how they use the product. The IE audience does not want or require these features.

obviously no browser is invincible, it's just disappointing to discover this since the browser is otherwise so hot.

a fix will probably be out soon anyway.

bk

[Pov]

[ QUOTE ]
nah. IE will never be as customize-able as other browsers IMO. Opera and Firefox are better because the user can setup things to make it better for how they use the product. The IE audience does not want or require these features.

[/ QUOTE ]

You could not be more wrong. Have you ever paid any attention to what Microsoft does as a company? If people are switching to Firefox because of the customization feature (or Microsoft even thinks they are) they will copy it and add their little twist to avoid lawsuits immediately. Sometimes they don't even add the twist.

I am not a zealot of M$, or Open Source or anything in particular and I use three different browsers and two OS's regularly. Firefox has started stealing market share from IE. Microsoft will retaliate by (re)crushing the market until someone innovates enough to make them do it again. This is the way of things. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[Yeknom58]

A patch will be out in no time. I have faith.

[Greg J]

Im running spybot right now. Considering like just about everyone one here, I have thousands out the electronically, how worried should I (we), being only semi computer literate be?

[Tboner7]

IE and FireFox are free. I don't see how they are really competing. M$ should just include FireFox in its computers. Would probably be cheaper for them.