Canon Puts Efficiency On Press
September 22, 2005 10:26 PM PDT
Attack code published for Firefox flaw
Computer code that could be used to attack Firefox, Mozilla Suite and Netscape users has been released on the Internet. The release of the attack code comes days after Mozilla released an updated version of Firefox to fix several security flaws, including the bug exploited by the code. A fixed version of the Mozilla Suite is also available, but Firefox-based Netscape has yet to be updated. The Netscape browser is a product of Netscape, which is a division of Time Warner's America Online subsidiary. An AOL spokesman had no comment on Thursday.
The attack code exploits a vulnerability that was disclosed two weeks ago. The flaw lies in the way the browsers handle International Domain Names, or IDNs, which are Web addresses that use international characters. Hackers had been working to exploit the flaw and had said the code would be released after fixes were available. The exploit could let attackers run code remotely on vulnerable computers and works on Firefox, Mozilla and, in some cases, Netscape, according to security researcher Berend-Jan Wever, who published the code. Mozilla has urged users to upgrade to the latest versions of its products.
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Dorkzilla is turning out to be worse the M$!
Download a real browser <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.opera.com" target="_newWindow">http://www.opera.com</a>
Now, Opera is a nice browser that does much more than Firefox. It allows you to rearange tabs and has lots of developer tools. It is very compliant with W3C recommendations and has lots of features. Now that it's free I would suggest that anybody who is interested download it and try it out. Just like anything though give yourself time to learn it as it doesn't work like IE and is still different than Firefox.
Firefox doesn't 'suck'. If and when Opera generates as many users and popularity as Firefox has then (I'm going to sound like a Microsoft fan) we will see if it can stand shinning under the scruteny. I, for one, think Firefox is fair quite well with regard to security. A flaw is found, a workaround is released, and in a week or so a fix is released. That's really all that can be expected of any company be it Microsoft, Mozilla, or Opera.
However, having a nasty attitude toward any company doesn't win converts to yours. This much I have learned. You want people to switch to Opera from Firefox or IE then you need to offer a compelling reason why they should. All you will accomplish with bashing is turning people away from Opera because they don't want to be associated with people who bash others. I think in someways this is a small part of the reason why Linux and Firefox have had problems making headway. Instead of techies discussing the benifits of using Linux or Firefox they just tell you how bad Microsoft sucks. Well, for the majority of people Microsoft products have done just fine.
Everyone is waiting for a bulletproof browser. What we need are smarer surfers.