Security threats Toolkit

Mozilla fixes 10 security flaws

Published: 16 Sep 2004 10:35 BST

The latest releases of the Mozilla and Firefox browsers, along with the Thunderbird email software, fix 10 security issues, including three critical vulnerabilities, according to the Mozilla Foundation, which develops the software.

The three critical flaws could let an attacker run code on the victim's computer, according to information published by the Mozilla Foundation on Tuesday. The vulnerabilities are caused by the improper handling of electronic business cards, known as vCards; overly large images in the bit map (BMP) format; and links that have host names using nonprintable characters.

The issues are fixed in the latest versions of the Mozilla Foundation's open-source software products: Mozilla 1.7.3, Firefox release candidate 1.0 and Thunderbird 0.8.

Security information provider Secunia gave the set of 10 holes a "highly critical" rating, its second-highest grade for Internet threats.

The plethora of new security issues comes a month after the Mozilla Foundation started offering money to researchers who found verifiable security problems in the browser. On Tuesday, the open-source group released its latest version of its software packages.

The Firefox browser in particular has benefited from the perception that its rival, Microsoft's Internet Explorer, suffers from security problems. A flaw revealed on Tuesday by Microsoft could put users of Internet Explorer at risk of having their PCs compromised by malicious Web sites.