Your Daily Computer Security Tips

As if the kerfuffle over Internet Explorer wasn’t enough, now Mozilla has issued eight fixes for its Firefox browser. What’s a cross-eyed surfer to do? Why, update Firefox, of course, and keep right on using it as your main browser!

Three of the Firefox fixes are rated critical. Two could allow a cross-site scripting attack, in which commands from one Web application are successfully executed in another, even though this should be impossible.

The third critical flaw could crash the browser, or even worse, allow a hacker to seize control of your computer. This is the dreaded remote code execution attack.

The patch brings us to Firefox 3.0.5. If you are still using Firefox 2, the update applies to you as well, but for the very last time. Mozilla no longer supports it, and in fact has removed the phishing filter in Firefox 2 because it uses an outdated protocol. Upgrade to Firefox 3 now.

Microsoft has now released the patch for Internet Explorer. Go to the Microsoft Update page, and update your IE browser. But you should still continue to use Firefox, or Opera or Chrome if you prefer.