Download this. Eight million Mozillians woke up the morning after Download Day to find they'd developed a killer hangover -- >a security flaw in Firefox 3.0 that could allow hostile code to take over their PCs. It took a grand total of five hours after FF3's release for the flaw to be discovered, according to TippingPoint, which pays researchers to come up with security bugs. Details on what the bug is or how it works are still a mystery to everyone but Mozilla, TippingPoint, and the now-slightly-richer researcher. Hey, at least we had 4 hours and 59 minutes worth of bliss. IE8 may be lucky to even get that much of a window.
Browser or bowser? In other browser news, Apple has finally gotten around to patching the "carpet bomb" bug in Safari 3.12 for Windows that could allow remote attackers to take over a machine. Apple had originally planned to ignore the bug -- presumably because it only affected Windows users, who really don't count -- but changed their minds and released a patch yesterday. Why? God only knows, and He isn't returning our calls.
Got hot tips or more browser bugs? Post them below or email me here: cringe (at) infoworld (dot) com. Top tipsters qualify for cool swag.
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Posted by Robert X. Cringely on June 20, 2008 07:30 AM
