Way OT- Mozilla Firefox help

[Dave Hinz]

Got a link? My sources don't seem to mention anything current. One of us has newer information than the other...not sure who.

[lgb]

No, it works fine. But my previous mail, both sent and received, and my address book, are empty. It had also lost my ISP info. In other words, it looked like I'd just installed it. I reloaded the entire directories from a CD backup, but that seemed to confuse it. Guess I'll have to uninstall and reinstall.

[damian penney]

Firefox 1.0.3 did indeed have a couple of issues but they have since been patched in 1.0.4 IE with all available patches applied is still full of holes though, you can check here

a full list of IE issues and by comparison for Firefox "Currently, 4 out of 17 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database." with the highest threat level being Less Critical 2/5

IE "Currently, 9 out of 47 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database." with the highest threat level being Highly Critical 4/5

[lgb]

I guess I didn't make it clear that I was talking about the standalone Thunderbird, not Firefox.

And while I haven't tried it yet, I ran across the below in another newsgroup. Sure sounds like my problem.

------------

1. I checked again, and restarted Thunderbird. Then I had a closer look at the directory structure, and under Profiles\ a directory with varying name (like 60fth4de.default\) contains the 'real' data. I copied Mail\ and ImapMail\ from my old directory there, as well as the collections of files found there in the old directory, and voila! everything was working again! Even my addresses reappeared!

-------------------

[alexy]

Are you talking about Firefox (per your note) or Thunderbird? Firefox knows nothing about your mail or address book, unless there is an extension I am not aware of.

[Dave in Fairfax]

Symantec came up with the warning, but my wife at DoD says the newest Firefox, v 1.0.4 has a fix in it, so that one *should* be safe.

Dave in Fairfax

[Jonah]

[Jonah]

[Dave Hinz]

Ah, OK, that's week old news then. Gotcha.

[Robert Bonomi]

Exploit discovered about 10 days ago. broad-based problem -- not just with Mozilla stuff. complicated timing-issue exploit by a malicious web-site.

_Already_fixed_ in FireFox 1.0.4, and Mozilla 1.7.8. out within _days_ of the vulnerability announcement.

[George E. Cawthon]

That information is not correct. Comparatively, if Firefox "has a major security problem" then IE "has NO security."

Brian Livingston just had a recent article on Firefox vs. IE in the latest online issue of his news column. Good information.

Check here to get the column and subscribe (free) or pay some money and get a lot more stuff:

WindowsSecrets.com/info

[George E. Cawthon]

I installed Firefox (1.0) and Thunderbird sometime back and it sucked everything out of Netscape (4.7) right into Firefox and Thunderbird-- bookmarks, history, all of my e-mail folders. Didn't loose anything.

[Mark Rance]

You're not slow, as you say, you're creating unnecessary problems for yourself. What possible compelling reason is there to be using Win anything but XP these days? There are so many advantages to using a current operating system over the fossil OS's you're electing to use. Why not upgrade to something realistic? As MS now admits, Win98 SE and ME were ly conceived ideas back then...and they garner no greater merit today.

-Mark

[Mark Rance]

What ae the specifics of the security probelm you speak of with Firefox?

-Mark

[Mark Rance]

That is what I am wondering...is Dave the only guy to figure out what got by all the Firefox developers? :^)

-Mark

[Dave in Fairfax]

You're reading and replying to old segments of the thread, or at least out of sync with what's happened in the thread. The upshot was that the security holes were fixed in Firefox v1.0.4.

Dave in Fairfax

[Dave Hinz]

That's the one I figured it was, so "nothing current" was it. It's wonderful (and not surprising) how fast the vulnerabilities in open-source software are fixed. Nothing like a team of motivated geeks to get the job done right, and right now.

[Dave Hinz]

The vulnerability in question was resolved more than a week ago, with version 1.04.

[Dave Hinz]

You mean Dave Dave, not Me Dave, right?

Dave

[lgb]

Well, let's see. I'm in the process of switching back to Linux, which I used to use to develop Unix software before I retired. I've been using W95 in the interim only for internet access and drawing model rr plans, woodworking plans, etc..

After I complete the switch, Windows will be used almost only for creating decals on an Alps printer. I wanted to upgrade to 98 because the Alps driver is better. Otherwise, I would have stayed at 95.

And when you're retired on a low budget, W98SE for $30, with a 400MHZ computer attached, looks like a pretty good deal :-).

I'm back to using Netscape (4.77, another oldie) to read my email as well as visit websites until I get Linux running. I just wanted to fix Thunderbird as an exersize in defeating M$ clobbering of it :-).

BTW, the fix I quoted in my last post didn't work either. I'm either going to give up or download a newer release. I do have the old files which are ASCII, so I can recover any missing addresses and emails I want to keep.

Enough - back to woodworking.