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TechWorld.com - Firefox has been hit by eight security flaws, six of which are also found in the older Mozilla suite.
The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker to take over an affected system, carry out cross-site scripting and bypass some security restrictions, the Mozilla Foundation warned on Friday when it released patches for the holes. Independent security firm Secunia gave the updates a "highly critical" rating.
As Firefox gains market share, its handling of security issues is drawing more scrutiny. The patches are the third round of security fixes for Firefox and the seventh update for the 1.7 version of Mozilla. The Mozilla project has stopped major development on the suite but is continuing to fix security flaws.
Two of the vulnerabilities affect Firefox only. One is an input validation error that occurs when processing the "pluginspage" attribute of the "embed" tag for plug-ins, it could be used to inject JavaScript code. The other is a bug in the sidebar that could allow cross-site scripting.
The remaining six bugs, which affect both browsers, are capable of the following:

• One of the flaws enables certain pop-ups can execute malicious code on a system if the user opens the pop-up.


• A bug in the way windows and tabs are handled can allow malicious code from an untrusted site to execute in the context of another site.


• A bug involving the URLs of "favicons" icons allows JavaScript code to execute with escalated privileges.


• A bug in installing search plug-ins can allow malicious code execution, but it requires that the user be tricked into installing a specially crafted search plug-in.
  
• Input validation errors in InstallTrigger and other XPInstall-related JavaScript objects could allow malicious code execution.
  
• A problem with the "chrome" user-interface code in validating DOM nodes allowed several exploits that could lead to malicious code execution or data theft; the exploits could be activated by trivial user actions, such as clicking on a link.

The updates, to Version 1.0.3 of Firefox and Version 1.7.7 of Mozilla are available from the Firefox and Mozilla download pages. The project said a number of extensions were broken by the security fixes, but most extensions have now been revised to work.