Vulnerability spotted in Mozilla's browser

Apr 23, 2008 09:22 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 quickly caught the attention of the Internet users and, even if it's currently just in beta stages, it is also installed on millions of computers around the world. However, its continuously growing vulnerability doesn't necessarily mean that it's 100 percent secure, a fact also underlined by the beta tag placed near its name. SecurityFocus today reported that a 'document.write()' Denial of Service vulnerability has been spotted in Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 and, as long as there are no newer releases, there's no patch available for it.

The exploit can be easily started by luring the user of the vulnerable Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 to a malicious website, especially created by the attacker to take advantage of the security flaw. Although this version of the browser is said to be the only vulnerable one, some other releases launched in the past may also be in trouble, SecurityFocus informs.

"Mozilla Firefox is prone to a remote denial-of-service vulnerability. Successful exploits can allow attackers to crash the affected browser, resulting in denial-of-service conditions. This issue affects Firefox 3 Beta 5; other versions may also be vulnerable. Attackers can exploit this issue by enticing an unsuspecting victim to view a malicious webpage," the security company noted in the advisory.

Mozilla Firefox 3.0 Beta 5 is the newest release of the application which is supposed to bring lots of new functions to the users who abandoned Microsoft's Internet Explorer and migrated to Mozilla's browser. At this time, the application is still in beta stages but the parent company may roll it out sometime this year.

If you wish to download the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, including the stable and the beta ones, you can take all of them straight from Softpedia, using the following link.