encyclo - 2:15 pm on Jul 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

All browsers are under intense scrutiny by bug-hunters at the moment - there have been several (fairly minor) security-related updates for Opera, and we are all aware of the problems with IE. This can only be a good thing as Opera and Mozilla will come out stronger and more secure (and IE too, let's hope).

Interestingly, this bug in Mozilla was first reported in 2002, but it is only now that the need has been felt to patch. The argument was that it is an OS problem rather than a Mozilla problem, and for a while there was no consensus within the Mozilla development team that anything needed to be done. It is because of the current fiasco with IE security, and the ensuing move towards Mozilla (their downloads have skyrocketed recently) that attention was brought to the problem again, and it was decided to apply a fix.

It is a good move by the Mozilla team, which should probably have been made much earlier. Even when the problem is not in your code, if your program can act as a vector for an exploit on the most prevalent OS, then it's best to do what you can to mitigate the problem.