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Firefox gets a fresh security update

Open-source browser gets tweaked just weeks after Mozilla released a large fix to address several vulnerabilities.

Dawn Kawamoto Former Staff writer, CNET News
Dawn Kawamoto covered enterprise security and financial news relating to technology for CNET News.
Dawn Kawamoto
Mozilla has issued a security update for its Firefox open-source browser, just weeks after it released a large fix to address several browser security flaws.

The Firefox 1.5.0.3 update is designed to address vulnerabilities in versions 1.5 through 1.5.0.2.

Malicious attackers could exploit the flaws to cause a denial-of-service attack, which in turn may allow them to take remote control of a user's system, according to an alert from security research company Secunia, which rates the flaw as "highly critical."

The flaws may be exploited when people attempt to engage a deleted component with designMode turned on. While this typically will crash the browser, it could also result in an attacker running malicious code, according to a Mozilla security advisory. Mozilla oversees the development of the Firefox browser.

The organization said it released the 1.5.0.3 version early to tackle the security issue. As a result, plans for a larger update will be bumped to version 1.8.0.4.

The latest security release follows one issued in mid-April. The 1.5.0.2 version was designed to address seven vulnerabilities, five of which were "critical" and could allow a malicious attacker to run code with virtually no user interaction.