Govt issues urgent alert for Mozilla Firefox users, and urges to upgrade browser as soon as possible. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) has announced that a variety of security vulnerabilities have been found on Mozilla products. Find out more information here.

HIGHLIGHTS

• Government issued a warning of the highest level to users using Mozilla Firefox to browse the internet.

• Every version of Mozilla Firefox versions before the most recent Firefox 98 update are impacted.

• If you haven’t updated your Firefox browser for some period of time, it’s time to do it immediately.

Government officials in India have issued a top-level caution to those who use Mozilla Firefox to browse the internet. In the most recent update Mozilla’s Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) declared that several security flaws have been found in Mozilla products.

CERT-In pointed out that these vulnerabilities can be exploited in hacker attacks to just get around security barriers however, they could also carry out fake attacks, run any code they want, and even obtain private information without the users’ consent.

Warning for Mozilla Firefox users

The security company has revealed it was found that the majority of Mozilla Firefox versions before the most recent Firefox 98 update are impacted by security flaws. Additionally, Mozilla Firefox ESR versions prior to 91.7 or Mozilla Firefox Thunderbird versions prior to 91.7 are also affected by similar security flaws.

“These weaknesses are present in Mozilla products because of the using reflows after free in-text and thread shutdown, time-of check time-of-use issue when verifying signatures of add-ons as well as an issue when managing the contents of an iframe with sandboxing that includes allow-popups and not allow-scripts memory safety issues within the browser engine download temporarily stored files into /tmp that are accessible to other users on the local and side-channel attacks on text as well as browser window spoofing with full screen mode.” CERT-In explains in the most recent advisory.

In addition to describing how hackers can exploit security weaknesses, CERT-In said in an official statementthat “A remote attacker can exploit these vulnerabilities by luring an individual to go to an crafted hyperlink or web page. A successful exploit of these vulnerabilities can enable a remote attacker to overcome security barriers, perform fraud, execute random code, gain access to sensitive data and trigger a the denial of service attack against the system targeted.”

CERT-In is requesting users who are affected to immediately change the Mozilla Firefox version to Firefox 98, Firefox ESR 91.7and Thunderbird 91.7. If you want to upgrade your Firefox to the most current version, follow these steps:

How can I make sure that you are up-to-date with your Mozilla Firefox browser.

To begin start, press the menu button located on the right-hand part of the Firefox toolbar.

Then, you will have to select the Help button.

Next, choose the About Firefox option.

Firefox will then search for updates. If it is the browser will download it.

After the download has finished After the download is complete, click Restart to upgrade Firefox.

In other words, if you haven’t updated your Firefox browser for some time, it’s time to do so now.