14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has released Firefox 3.6.10 and 3.5.13 just one week after 3.6.9 and 3.5.12, in order to address an issue that left people unable to use the browser.
"Fixed a single stability issue affecting a limited number of users," the release notes for the new updates read.
The problem refers to start-up crashes that certain users of the browser experienced after upgrading to 3.6.9 and 3.5.12, the major security upgrades released on September 7.
On September 10, Mozilla suspended update delivery for all users of Firefox 3.1*, 3.5* and 3.6* branches in order to investigate the mysterious crashes.
"Though this was a spike, the overall 'crashiness' of Firefox 3.6.x has not really increased at all. At about 1k crashes a day, this crash is a drop in the bucket vs active daily users.
"But, because it is a crash on startup that could prevent people from using Firefox entirely, we feel it was best to get a fix out quickly," explains Christian Legnitto, a Mozilla employee, who works on Firefox releases.
The temporary update suspension has now been lifted and the new releases should start appearing to users of Firefox 3.6.8 and 3.5.11.
It is very important to install these versions because they contain the same security enhancements as the buggy 3.6.9 and 3.5.12.
This includes fixes for over a dozen critical vulnerabilities, as well as support for the new X-FRAME-OPTIONS HTTP response header, used to mitigate clickjacking.
A patch for a remote binary planting bug is also included. Binary planting or DLL hijacking is a relatively new class of vulnerabilities, which affect hundreds of applications.
Issues which enabled this type of attack have also been patched in the latest Safari and Opera updates.
Firefox 3.6.10 and 3.5.13 for Windows can be downloaded from here.
Firefox 3.6.10 and 3.5.13 for Mac can be downloaded from here.
Firefox 3.6.10 and 3.5.13 for Linux can be downloaded from here and here.