Firefox Exploit Adds Fuel to Browser Security Feud

An anonymous reader writes "Washingtonpost.com is reporting that a fairly nasty exploit has been released for a security hole that Firefox patched just yesterday. This is sure to add fuel to the ongoing heated debate over whether Mozilla is any safer the Internet Explorer." From the article: "This is not your run-of-the-mill proof of concept exploit code. It appears to be quite comprehensive, and would allow any attacker to use it with only slight modifications. According to the advisory, the code is designed to be embedded in a Web site so that anyone computer visiting the evil site with Firefox or Netscape would open up a line of communication with another Internet address of the attacker's choice, effectively letting the bad guys control the victim computer from afar."

Comments

"is any more security?"

[John Courtland]

FTFA:

Kennedy was referring to the heated debate in the security community over whether Firefox is any more security than IE

Is Taco editing the Washington Post now?

Re:What's a net guy to do?

[October_30th]

It's time to stop using the internet and just pull the plug. The spammers and hackers have won. Usenet's already useless, e-mail's getting close to it and web's getting there as well. Game over.

I don't want to maintain a firewall just to prevent some dickhead trashing my home computer. I don't want to keep updating browsers and patching the operating system in an obsessive-compulsive manner so that I can browse the net.

Oh well. It was great as long as it lasted.

OSS to the rescue?

[uofitorn]

I don't understand, I visit /. day in day out and all I hear about is how the great benefit of OSS is that anyone can read and improve the source code reducing the amount of vulnerabilities. A million zealots can preach the benefits of FLOSS, not many of them seem to practice it though.

Go ahead mark me down as troll but this is something I've been thinking about a lot. I use OSS on my Solaris network when permitted because the benefits are still awesome. Also, please save the canned replies of "but it was fixed quickly because the source was available". It's still a response to the problem that should not have been present to begin with if the zealots were to be believed.