Mozilla ships Firefox 14, patches 18 bugs, encrypts search

18.07.2012
Just days after a former employee blasted Mozilla for its frequent updates, the company on Tuesday shipped Firefox 14, patching 18 vulnerabilities and adding automatic encryption of searches passed to Google's search engine.

The upgrade also lets users set an option that loads plug-ins -- such as Adobe's Flash Player or Oracle's Java -- only after approval, an additional security measure that may prevent stop some attacks.

Half of the 18 bugs quashed in Firefox 14 were rated "critical" by Mozilla, while four were labeled as "high" threats in the company's four-step scoring system. The remaining five were pegged as "moderate" vulnerabilities.

, uncovered by a Mozilla security researcher, involved the "javascript:" URL format, which could be exploited by attackers to escape from the JavaScript "sandbox," an anti-exploit technology designed to safely execute scripting code.

Three of the 18 flaws were reported by Google security engineers, and several bugs that could be used to conduct phishing attacks were also crushed in the upgrade to Firefox 14.

All 18 vulnerabilities were also patched in a companion update to the Firefox ESR, or Extended Support Release, version of the browser. Firefox ESR is designed for businesses that run the open-source browser; unlike the normal build, it doesn't change its feature set or user interface (UI) for over a year, and only receives security patches.