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Clearly there is nothing that hackers won’t go after in the attempt to monkey about with your computer’s innards. Any opening, no matter how insignificant, needs to be closed before it can be exploited. With this in mind Mozilla today released an update to Firefox, upping its version to 3.5.4, that patches 16 weaknesses, eleven of which are critical.
Hackers were busy on the obvious: the browser engine, JavaScript, and open-source media libraries; as well as the less obvious: the GIF color map parser and the string-to-number converter. In its security advisory, Mozilla reports: “Some of these crashes showed evidence of memory corruption under certain circumstances and we presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code.”
Mozilla notes that the JavaScript vulnerabilities can cause browser crashes. Those not able or unwilling to upgrade are recommended to turn JavaScript off.
If you’re still hanging out in Firefox 3 you’ve also got a security patch waiting for you. Version 3.0.15 was released, addressing nine problems, four of which Mozilla tagged as critical.
Image Credit: Mozilla
Links:
[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/bartsalisbury
[2] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9140008/Mozilla_fixes_16_flaws_with_Firefox_3.5.4
[3] http://www.mozilla.org/security/announce/
[4] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/5_awesome_mozilla_labs_projects_firefox_35
[5] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/adobe_releases_29_security_patches_acrobat_and_reader
[6] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/fearing_exploit_microsoft_patches_powerpoint
[7] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/firefox
[8] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/javascript
[9] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/mozilla
[10] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/security
[11] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/software
[12] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/software_news
[13] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/update
[14] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/news
[15] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/login?&commentfragment=comments_top_anchor