Mozilla ships Firefox 14, patches 18 bugs, encrypts search

Just days after a former employee blasted Mozilla for its frequent updates, the company on Tuesday shipped Firefox 14, patching 18 vulnerabilities and adding automatic encryption of searches passed to Google's search engine.

The upgrade also lets users set an option that loads plug-ins -- such as Adobe's Flash Player or Oracle's Java -- only after approval, an additional security measure that may prevent stop some attacks.

Half of the 18 bugs quashed in Firefox 14 were rated "critical" by Mozilla, while four were labeled as "high" threats in the company's four-step scoring system. The remaining five were pegged as "moderate" vulnerabilities.

One of the more interesting vulnerabilities, uncovered by a Mozilla security researcher, involved the "javascript:" URL format, which could be exploited by attackers to escape from the JavaScript "sandbox," an anti-exploit technology designed to safely execute scripting code. Read more...