14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla's Firefox, the browser that fights for the supremacy of the Internet, is once again affected by a highly critical security flaw that can allow an attacker compromise a vulnerable system. Security company Secunia rated the flaw as highly critical and sustained that it was discovered on a computer running Windows XP SP2 with the latest updates installed along with Firefox 2.0.0.4. However, other versions of the application might be also vulnerable to attacks but there are not reports available.
"A vulnerability has been discovered in Firefox, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user's system. The problem is that Firefox registers the "firefoxurl://" URI handler and allows invoking firefox with arbitrary command line arguments. Using e.g. the "-chrome" parameter it is possible to execute arbitrary Javascript in chrome context. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary commands e.g. when a user visits a malicious web site using Microsoft Internet Explorer," Secunia said in the advisory.
The security company also mentioned the only solution available at this moment: avoid browsing untrusted websites that might exploit the recently discovered vulnerability.
Internet Explorer and Firefox are involved into an important battle with an impressive award: the supremacy of the Internet that means more visitors. Indirectly, a boosted number of consumers bring more money to the parent company, in our case Microsoft or Mozilla. The battle was started a long time ago when Firefox was described as a more secure alternative for Internet Explorer, the default browser of the Windows operating system.
Also, Firefox was the first application that offered the tabbed browsing concept, being copied by Internet Explorer 7 that now allows you to browse several pages with a single instance of the application. Still, the consumers are able to choose from a large variety of programs such as Opera and the recently introduced Safari.