 |
 Updates to popular Web Browsers released
April 19, 2005
Opera and Firefox browsers have been given a raise recently, with the former moving one integer higher to 8.0 version in a planned release, while the latter just edging one decimal upwards in a forced conduct.
Norwegian publicly-traded Opera Software has released its new version of Opera browser that boasts increased Web security and enhanced navigation and control mechanisms in an effort to garner more popularity in a browser market. Its ads-supported free version can be downloaded from here.New Opera 8 features some innovative technologies such as the ability to read the highighted text within a browser window with a human-modulated voice, phishing protection through the use of site assessment and display techniques.
Opera, having the strongest security track record, is competing with Microsoft and Mozilla Foudation's browsers with a current market share of just around one percent of PC market. Opera also makes browsers for mobiles devices such as PDAs and smartphones which can scale down the display of contents to fit the devices' tiny screen sizes.
Update: Opera site is intermittently unavailable -- probably because of a number of people flocking to download the software.
In a separate development, Mozilla has released its Firefox 1.3 version of acceleratingly popular browser to address a number of critial vulnerabilities found in its previous versions.
Vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to install malicious code or steal personal data have been detailed on Mozilla's security Web site over the weekend.
Ian Latter, senior security consultant at Internet security specialist Pure Hacking, said most of the vulnerabilities are based on the way the applications handle JavaScript.
"There are some permission issues related to running JavaScript at an escalated privilege level. They remove some of the security measures used to keep JavaScript sandboxed and allow it to potentially do malicious things to your computer," Latter said.
On Monday, security advisory firm Secunia issued a "highly critical" rating on the flaws found in Mozilla Firefox 0.x and 1.x versions. Secunia posted its advisory on eight of the flaws.
According to the French Security Incident Response Team, attackers could run malicious code on a user's system because of a flaw in the Mozilla browser's pop-up blocker.
An advisory from the French group said, "When a pop-up is blocked, the user is given the ability to open that one pop-up...If the pop-up URL were JavaScript: selecting 'Show JavaScript:...' from the infobar or pop-up blocking status bar icon menus would run the JavaScript with elevated privileges, which could be used to install malicious software."
Another of the Firefox flaws can be exploited when a user visits a Web page that requires a plug-in that has not already been installed. The French advisory claims that if the browser's Plug-in Finder Service is used to automatically locate an appropriate plug-in, the "manual install" function can be used to "launch arbitrary code capable of stealing local data or installing malicious code."
Pure Hacking's Latter advises users to either disable JavaScript or download a patched version from Mozilla's Web site.
|
|
