Mozilla has released a new version of its Firefox browser for Desktop and Android. The security update is basically to patch the recent vulnerabilities that were discovered. Researchers have discovered two security vulnerabilities called Spectre and Meltdown that take advantage of design flaws in microprocessors. Firefox maker says it has provided a temporary fix to make attacks more difficult. This update landed in as version 57.0.4 to Android, and also to desktops.
“Since this new class of attacks involves measuring precise time intervals, as a partial, short-term, mitigation we are disabling or reducing the precision of several time sources in Firefox. The precision of performance now has been reduced from 5µs to 20µs, and the SharedArrayBuffer feature has been disabled because it can be used to construct a high-resolution timer,” Mozilla says.
Similarly, Microsoft also released patches for Edge browser and Internet Explorer. Microsoft had also issued a security patch for Windows 10 machines that automatically get downloaded to prevent any risk. Apple has also confirmed that Meltdown flaw has been fixed with the macOS 10.13.2 update.
Spectre and Meltdown are not only limited to computers, but also affects mobile devices, and servers running on cloud computing network. While Spectre affects devices using chipsets from three leading chip manufacturers, Meltdown affects Intel-powered devices in particular and threatens devices manufactured over the past two decades.
We would recommend our readers to update their browsers to the latest versions to stay safe from Meltdown and Spectre. You can download Firefox 57.0.4 for Windows, Linux, Mac, and Android.