Browser Security News

In response to today’s news that Google is releasing its own browser, code-named Chrome, I decide to call John Lilly, CEO of Mozilla Corp., the folks behind the fast-growing Firefox browser. My intention was to find out what Lilly thought about this development, especially since Mozilla has been viewed as close personal partner of Google’s.

Mozilla has renewed an agreement with Google Inc. that pays the browser maker for assigning Google’s search engine as Firefox’s default, Mozilla’s former CEO said this week. The three-year deal is good through November 2011, said Mitchell Baker, currently the chairwoman of Mozilla Corp., in a post to her blog on Tuesday.

As CNET News first reported last week, Internet Explorer 8 will include a way to surf somewhat anonymously, allowing the user to suspend browsing history, cookies, and other identifying information. Mozilla had considered such a feature for its Firefox 3 release, but dropped it for technical reasons. Apple Safari also includes a similar feature.

Carnegie-Mellon University Monday announced it’s making available a free add-on to Mozilla Firefox 3.0 that’s intended to boost browser security. The Firefox add-on was developed at the university’s School of Computer Science and College of Engineering and is available for download here.

Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. The code was merged today (but is not yet ready to be enabled by default in the nightly builds) and is planned for inclusion in Firefox 3.1, the next incremental update of the open-source web browser.

With Firefox 3, Mozilla has changed the way Firefox handles SSL certificates. This change could scare away visitors from tens of thousands of websites that have expired or self-signed SSL certificates.

Mozilla Messaging patched nine security vulnerabilities in Thunderbird yesterday, the first time it has plugged holes in the e-mail software since early May. Thunderbird 2.0.0.16, which was added to Mozilla’s download servers late Wednesday, quashes nine bugs, including one that was patched last week in Firefox, the company’s open-source browser.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remains the most popular browser in the world. This despite report after report calling the program less secure than Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and other free competitors. Yet IE remains the preferred browser of nearly four out of five people surfing the Web.

Suddenly, Mozilla seems mightily concerned about Apple’s Safari. Internet Explorer can only benefit from the impending conflict. Mozilla took a surprisingly proactive approach with Firefox last week, and neither move really had to do with Microsoft.

Mozilla announced today the official release of Firefox 3 beta 4, which includes over 900 additional improvements related to the previous beta release. At this stage in development, most of the work on Firefox is heavily focused on polishing the user interface, refining performance, and reducing the memory overhead. These efforts clearly show in beta […]