In what could be regarded as an embarrassing move the latest version of Mozilla’s Firefox browser (version 16) has had to have been taken offline following the discovery of an exploit affecting users’ security.
The flaw allows malicious websites to determine sites that users have visited prompting Mozilla to recommend that anyone using version 16 should temporarily downgrade as a precaution to version 15.0.1.
Only those that have upgraded to version 16 are affected although while the flawed version was online a proportion of users will have been upgraded automatically. According to Firefox the number of user affected is ‘limited’ since the upgrade was online for less than a day. As to how many users this equates to we can't be sure.
Anyone who was online during that period though will have been upgraded if their browser is set to automatically install updates.
Mozilla will however be issuing patches as soon as possible and anyone using version 16 will be upgraded.
The BBC discusses this story further here.
