June 23, 2010

Mozilla has shipped a new version of Firefox that corrects a number of vulnerabilities in the browser. Separately, a new version of Opera is available that fixes at least five security flaws in the software.

Firefox version 3.6.4 addresses seven security holes ranging from lesser bugs to critical flaws. Mozilla says this latest version of Firefox also does a better job of handling plugin crashes, so that if a plugin causes problems when the user browses a site, Firefox will simply let the plugin crash instead of tying up the entire browser process. Firefox should auto-update (usually on your next restart of the browser), but you can force an update check by clicking “Help,” and then “Check for Updates” (when I did this, I noticed that in its place was the “Apply Downloaded Update Now,” option, indicating that Firefox had already fetched this upgrade.

Mozilla also shipped, 3.5.10, an update that fixes at least nine security vulnerabilities in its 3.5.x line of Firefox. The software maker will only continue to support this version of Firefox for another couple of months, so if you’re on the 3.5.x line, you might consider upgrading soon (don’t know which version you’re using, click “Help” and “About Mozilla Firefox”).

Opera’s update brings the browser to version 10.54, which corrects a few critical vulnerabilities. Opera now includes an auto-update feature, so Opera users may already have been notified about this update (I wasn’t). In any case, Opera is urging users to upgrade to the latest version, available here.


5 thoughts on “Security Updates for Firefox, Opera Browsers

  1. Dave Mich

    When will Firefox ever fix the memory leak?

  2. Jim

    In your version of Opera click on “Tools | Preferences” in the top toolbar and then select the “Advanced” tab — under “Security”, there will be an “Auto-update” setting with a drop-down box of options. I think the default is set to “automatically install updates”, but there are 2 other options: “do not check for updates” and “notify me about available updates”. I’ve got mine set to notify, and as soon as I launched Opera the other day after the new version was released I got that notification, so yours might be set to “do not check”.

  3. JCitizen

    FileHippo update checker informed me of the update while I was using MS update, so I clicked the green arrow, and whoosh! Man that was a fast update, even if I am using my own download manager!

    Fifteen minutes later FF popped up with several plug-in updates; worked smooth as silk. Things are peachy-keen with Mozilla today! =D

  4. JCitizen

    Got another update already! Version 3.6.6!!

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