Firefox

According to the report provided by Sophos Naked Security blog a new phony anti-virus scam is infecting machines on the Internet in the guise of a Microsoft update. The fake Microsoft pop-up appears only on PCs using Firefox browser.

Sophos says that infected in drive-by downloads from compromised sites receive the scareware that appears as urgent update notifications. These updates are fake and only come to affected machines that use Firefox. Authentic updates from Microsoft come only through the Internet Explorer.

Mozilla refused the request of US regulators to ban a Firefox add-on that allows users to access sites which have domain names confiscated earlier this year.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement, an agency under the Department of Homeland Security that in February took the unprecedented step of seizing domain names accused of streaming live pay-per-view sporting events, requested the open source company to ban MafiaaFire add-on.

According to a research conducted by a security group Firefox and Chrome browsers cannot detect new phishing attacks that targeted recently customers of Bank of America and PayPal. The phishing scam manages to bypass fraud protections built in to the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome by attaching an HTML file to the spam email.

In a move to compete with Google which makes updated browsers every six to eight weeks Mozilla announced that it is planning to release four new versions of Firefox this year shortening thus the browser’s cycle. Up to present days Mozilla has released updated versions every 12 to 18 months.

The draft of Mozilla’s Firefox roadmap for 2011 shows that one of the non-profit entity’s priorities is to "ship our new technology to users in smaller bundles, more frequently."

A new privacy feature under development by Mozilla that is aimed at enabling users to opt out of online tracking has a significant flaw that makes it more than useless. As the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has recognized that tracking is a privacy concern for Web-surfing citizens and has proposed implementation of some sort of do-not-track framework similar to the do-not-call lists that are supposed to keep annoying telemarketers from calling you, many web browser makers included a privacy feature.

Mozilla claims that its browser has the fastest SunSpider scores on the planet after its internal tests revealed that the company’s latest Firefox JavaScript engine — which includes the new JagerMonkey extension — outperforms both Google Chrome's V8 engine and Apple Safari's Nitro. The tests, apparently excluded Opera and Internet Explorer. Director of community development Asa Dotzler made the claim on Monday morning with a blog post.

While the new Firefox engine trails Chrome on Google's V8 benchmarks Mozilla has reached a milestone nonetheless.

A developer Eric Butler showed critical vulnerabilities in most social networking and other websites that allows anyone collect private user data including login credentials from Wi-Fi networks. Butler has created Firefox extension, Firesheep, which will let you essentially eavesdrop on any open Wi-Fi network and capture users’ cookies.

Users of Firefox are being tricked into installing a Trojan that makes the browser to save all login credentials by default and subsequently uses the stolen information to create a new user account (username: Maestro) on the compromised machine. Then it steals personal user data from the Windows Protected Storage Area which is on a constant basis transferred to the crooks’ server.

The author behind the Trojan known as Salar “Salixem” Zeynali is an Iran-based crimeware hobbyist and heavy metal enthusiast, according to his Facebook profile.

According to the latest data from StatCounter by Pingdom Google’s web browser experienced high growth catching up to Firefox this year. Over the past 12 months Chrome’s market share rose from 3.7 percent in September of 2009 to 11.5% by September this year.

As the graph shows Safari, Opera, and "Other" even taken together cannot match Google’s brainchild.

According to the data from the Net Applications regarding to browser market share in August, Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 holds its leadership, advancing all its rivals in growth. 

However, elder Internet Explorer 6, an outdated and insecure browser, refuses to die down, though it’s losing ground violently.

As Microsoft released its new Hotmail service last week a great number of complaints have been posted on the forums since then. Users express their utmost dissatisfaction with the new interface. In light of these events the Redmond company advised its consumers to access email accounts via Google Chrome browser in order to successfully connect to the upgraded service.

According to a new research four major browsers fail to remove users’ personal information even when they browse in a private mode. While privacy settings provided by the browsers should supposedly allow users to visit a website without leaving any trace on their computers, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Safari frequently leave tracks, according to the research, which is scheduled to be presented at next week's Usenix Security Symposium in Washington DC.

Mozilla reports that the cash it offers to individuals who find security bugs as a bounty is often rejected. The bug bounty program launched by Mozilla is already six years old. It was introduced to encourage tech savvy persons to help the open source company find bugs in its product.

Aza Raskin, senior Mozilla developer, announced that future versions of Mozilla Firefox will have a new tab design. Dubbed as Tab Candy the new feature will place tabs inside the browser window, grouping them according to particular associations which will resemble viewing thumbnails.

Besides, users will be able to load large numbers of tabs at the top of a browser window simply by clicking on that Candy thumbnail.

Mozilla has submitted to the Apple App Store its browserless Firefox application. Knowing the Cupertino’s vulnerable heart that easily gets offended with third-party products Mozilla does not offer the browser itself, instead it has built an iPhone version of Firefox Sync, the browser bookmark-syncing service formerly known as Weave. This version is dubbed Firefox Home.