Mozilla Firefox is a
free and open source[10] web browser developed for
Microsoft Windows,
OS X and
Linux (including
Android) coordinated by
Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the
Mozilla Corporation. Firefox uses the
Gecko layout engine to render web pages, which implements current and anticipated
web standards.
[11]
As of October 2012, Firefox has approximately 20% to 24% of worldwide
usage share of web browsers, making it the third most used web browser, according to different sources.
[12][13][14][15] According to Mozilla, Firefox counts over 450 million users around the world.
[16] The browser has had particular success in
Indonesia,
Germany,
Poland and
Estonia, where it is the most popular browser with 65%,
[17] 47%
[18] 47%
[19] and 35%
[20] of the market share, respectively.
Features include
tabbed browsing,
spell checking,
incremental find,
live bookmarking,
smart bookmarks, a
download manager,
private browsing, location-aware browsing (also known as "
geolocation") based on a
Google service
[28] and an integrated search system that uses Google by default in most localizations. Functions can be added through
extensions, created by
third-party developers,
[29] of which there is a wide selection, a feature that has attracted many of Firefox's users.
Additionally, Firefox provides an environment for web developers in
which they can use built-in tools, such as the Error Console or the
DOM Inspector, or extensions, such as
Firebug.
Security
Firefox uses a
sandbox security model,
[42] and limits scripts from accessing data from other web sites based on the
same origin policy.
[43] It uses
SSL/TLS to protect communications with web servers using strong
cryptography when using the
HTTPS protocol.
[44] It also provides support for web applications to use
smartcards for authentication purposes.
[45]
The Mozilla Foundation offers a "bug bounty" (up to 3000 USD cash
reward and a Mozilla T-shirt) to researchers who discover severe
security holes in Firefox.
[46] Official guidelines for handling security vulnerabilities discourage early
disclosure of vulnerabilities so as not to give potential attackers an advantage in creating exploits.
[47]
Because Firefox generally has fewer publicly known unpatched security
vulnerabilities than
Internet Explorer (see
Comparison of web browsers), improved security is often cited as a reason to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox.
[48][49][50][51] The Washington Post
reports that exploit code for known critical unpatched security
vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer was available for 284 days in 2006.
In comparison, exploit code for known, critical security
vulnerabilities in Firefox was available for 9 days before Mozilla
issued a patch to remedy the problem.
[52]
A 2006
Symantec
study showed that, although Firefox had surpassed other browsers in the
number of vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities that year through September,
these vulnerabilities were patched far more quickly than those found in
other browsers – Firefox's vulnerabilities were fixed on average one
day after the exploit code was made available, as compared to nine days
for Internet Explorer.
[53]
Symantec later clarified their statement, saying that Firefox still had
fewer security vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer, as counted by
security researchers.
[54]
In 2010 a study of the
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) based on data compiled from the
National Vulnerability Database (NVD) Firefox was listed as the 5th most vulnerable desktop software, Internet Explorer ranked 8th, and
Google Chrome as 1st.
[55]
InfoWorld has cited security experts saying that as Firefox becomes more popular, more vulnerabilities will be found,
[56] a claim that
Mitchell Baker,
president of the Mozilla Foundation, has denied: "There is this idea
that market share alone will make you have more vulnerabilities. It is
not relational at all."
[57]
In October 2009, Microsoft's security engineers acknowledged that Firefox was vulnerable since February of that year due to a
.NET Framework 3.5 SP1
Windows update that silently installed a buggy 'Windows Presentation Foundation' plug-in into Firefox.
[58] This vulnerability has since been patched by Microsoft.
[59]
As of February 11, 2011, Firefox 3.6 had no known unpatched security
vulnerabilities according to
Secunia.
[60] Internet Explorer 8 had five unpatched security vulnerabilities, the worst being rated "Less Critical" by Secunia.
[61]
Mozilla claims that all patched
vulnerabilities of Mozilla products are publicly listed.
[62]
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