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The Mozilla Firefox 95 web browser is now available for download ahead of its December
7th official launch for all supported platforms, including GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Firefox 95 is here as the last release of the web browser in 2021, coming seven weeks
after Firefox 94. It’s not a big update, but it brings a few cool changes to make your
web browsing experience more enjoyable and secure.
This release further improves the Picture-in-Picture (PiP) feature with a new right-click context
menu option called “Move Picture-in-Picture Toggle to Left/Right Side,” which lets you
move the Picture-in-Picture toggle button to either the left or right side of a video.
Security-wise, Firefox 96 enables the RLBox toolkit for sandboxing third-party libraries,
which hardens Firefox against potential security vulnerabilities in third-party libraries,
on all supported platforms, making the web browser more secure by default. Is also enables
Site Isolation to better protect users against side-channel attacks like the infamous Spectre
vulnerability.
Other than that, this release adds a User Agent override for the Slack.com website,
which allows Firefox users who want to use the proprietary business communication platform
enjoy more Call features and also access the so-called Slack Huddles.
Firefox 96 also lets users of the JAWS screen reader and ZoomText magnifier to access Firefox
without having to switch applications, adds several memory allocator improvements, implements
new enterprise policies, and speculatively compiles JavaScript ahead of time to further
improve page loading performance.
Of course, this release also addresses various bugs and security issues so it’s a recommended
update for every Firefox user out there. More of Firefox 95’s changes will be revealed
tomorrow, December 7th, 2021, when Mozilla will officially announce the new version.
See the release notes for more details.
Meanwhile, if you want to use Firefox 95 right now, you can download the binaries from the
Mozilla FTP server for GNU/Linux, macOS, and Windows platforms. A Snap package is also
provided there for those who want to install Firefox as a Snap.
:: More ::
Here’s How Firefox 95 Is Even More Secure
Mozilla is getting ready to release Firefox 95. While the list of new features won’t
exactly set the browser world on fire, the security upgrade the browser is receiving
is nothing short of impressive The browser now includes a novel sandboxing technology
called RLBox, which will significantly improve the security offered by the browser.
What is RLBox Sandboxing?
Basically, RLBox uses WebAssembly to isolate potentially-buggy code. The browser isolates
five different modules called Graphite, Hunspell, Ogg, Expat, and Woff2. Mozilla says that it
can treat these modules as untrusted code, which would prevent any vulnerabilities—even
zero-days—from causing problems.
Many threat actors attack by chaining together two vulnerabilities. With RLBox, code can’t
jump to unexpected parts of the rest of the program, and it can’t access memory outside
of a specified region. Essentially, it’s contained, so threat actors can’t jump through
multiple vulnerabilities to cause harm to your computer.
As for how it’ll benefit Firefox, Mozilla says, “RLBox is a big win for us on several
fronts: it protects our users from accidental defects as well as supply-chain attacks, and
it reduces the need for us to scramble when such issues are disclosed upstream.”
It doesn’t appear that Mozilla wants Firefox to be the only browser using this security
process, as the company said, “Moreover, we hope to see this technology make its way
into other browsers and software projects to make the ecosystem safer. RLBox is a standalone
project that’s designed to be very modular and easy-to-use, and the team behind it would
welcome other use-cases.”
What Else Is New in Firefox 95?
Firefox 95 also gets the ability to move the Picture-in-Picture toggle button to the opposite
side of the video.
The browser also reduces the power usage of software decoded video on macOS, especially
in fullscreen. If you use Firefox to watch videos on services like Netflix, you’ll
find the power usage goes down a bit, which is a welcomed change.
While Firefox 95 doesn’t officially launch until December 7, 2021, you can download it
through Mozilla’s FTP right now for Mac, Windows, and Linux.
:: More ::
Firefox’s latest security feature is designed to protect itself from buggy code
The RLBox sandboxing tech is coming with Firefox 95
Firefox 95, the latest version of Mozilla’s browser that’s rolling out starting today,
introduces a new security feature that’s designed to limit the damage that bugs and
security vulnerabilities in its code can cause, Mozilla announced today. The feature, called
RLBox, was developed with help from researchers at the University of California San Diego
and the University of Texas, and it was originally released as a prototype last year. It’s
coming to both the desktop and mobile versions of Firefox.
At its core, RLBox is a sandboxing technology, which means that it’s effectively able to
isolate code so that any security vulnerabilities it might contain can’t harm the overall
system. Sandboxing is a widely used security method across the industry, and browsers already
run web content in sandboxed processes to try to stop malicious or buggy sites from
compromising the overall browser.
MOZILLA HOPES OTHER PROGRAMS AND BROWSERS ADOPT THE TECHNOLOGY
RLBox differs from this traditional approach, however, and doesn’t have the same costs
to performance and memory usage. This makes it possible to sandbox critical browser subcomponents
like its spell checker, effectively allowing it to treat them as untrusted code while still
running in the same process. This places limits on how code can run or which memory it can
access.
As of today’s release, Firefox is isolating five modules: its Graphite font rendering
engine, Hunspell spell checker, Ogg multimedia container format, Expat XML parser, and Woff2
web font compression format. Mozilla says this means if bugs or vulnerabilities are
discovered in one of these subcomponents, the Firefox team won’t need to scramble
to stop them from compromising the entire browser. “Even a zero-day vulnerability
in any of them should pose no threat to Firefox,” Mozilla says.
Mozilla admits that it’s not a catch-all solution and that the approach won’t work
everywhere, such as particularly performance-sensitive browser components. But the developer says
it hopes to see other browsers and software projects implement the technology and that
it intends to use it with more of Firefox’s components in the future. Mozilla has also
updated its bug bounty program and will now pay researchers if they’re able to bypass
the new sandboxes.
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