News: Germany warns against use of Firefox

The German government has issued a warning about using the Firefox browser because of security issues.

The Federal Office for Information Security made a similar ruling on the safety of Internet Explorer in January.

The office warned that the Firefox vulnerability, confirmed by Firefox makers, could allow hackers to run malicious programs on users' computers.

A new browser release at the end of the month will fix the bug which relates to the current version, Firefox 3.6.

A "beta" or test version of that release, Firefox 3.6.2, is already available but has not yet been fully tested.

The BergerCERT team of the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has recommended that users stop using Firefox until the tested fix is released - in a move remarkably similar to the January announcement, in which France followed suit just days later.

Fox swap?

The Firefox vulnerability was confirmed by maker Mozilla last week on its security blog, when it promised that the next official release would address the issue.

It is only the current version that is affected, but given that prior releases have different vulnerabilities, reverting to an older version of the browser is ill-advised.

Switching to a different browser may not be a good solution either, said Graham Cluley, senior technologist at security firm Sophos.

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