The internet is a merciless engine of progress, and I don’t always think that’s a good thing. Take the Mozilla Foundation. Turning out internet software tools since the early days, it is now, according to statistic addicts, almost consigned to history when it comes to market share for its famous Firefox browser. 

But there’s also Thunderbird, a cross-platform email client application that’s actually usable. This has recently been reworked with version 115, codenamed Supernova, and its changes are worth some attention.

We live in an era of cloud-resident email accounts. Actually, if you want to be pedantic about it, that description is nonsense.

Cloud scales up and down as your demand for computing varies, driven by your business and your customers. 

When did you last ring up Hotmail and say “deliver a bit faster”, or demand the right to migrate your online presence from one cloud hosting region to another? Not even Amazon’s (otherwise excellent) business email hosting service gives you one iota of the controllability that cloud hosters take for granted.

This cuts little ice with the type of user who throws ‘cloud’ around with abandon. The classic cloud-obsessed, intolerant user considers local expertise to be the kind of dinosaur they can do without, the moment they switch to the cloud. The problem for them is, thanks to COVID-19, we have all been through a global phenomenon that showed us exactly what happens when bureaucrats design a system using modern tools.

Investing in a solid local database

What does this have to do with Thunderbird? Very simply, it’s all about the uses and upkeep of a local database. Cloud systems assume there will always be a connection to the cloud, and that any database services are handled in a megascale, highly optimized fashion. 

What I found was that while pandemic systems (viral detection tests, vaccination records etc) were demanded locally, and held centrally, there was no plan B: if you were denied access, then even local copies of PDFs on Android phones wouldn’t open. Ironically, that’s because the bureaucrats used the PDF format to limit the lifetime of the certificates they graciously allowed me to download, and the lifetime, even opened locally, demanded a cloud connection to be checked and permitted.

All of the crises I’ve seen in the last few years have, as an apparent side effect, included loss of access to the cloud. Whether it’s queueing for the passport check at Calais Eurostar, or sitting in huge traffic snarl-ups in California, the sign that you are in real trouble is that your cloud-resident services go down. 

These experiences have made me much more interested in being able to have a local, portable repository of messages and documents, which doesn’t depend on the cloud. Enter Thunderbird. I want to be able to show officials everything I need to satisfy their enquiries without necessarily having a trusted link. 

I know that Thunderbird isn’t alone. In particular, Yahoo has relaunched and rethought its local email app. I particularly like its take on the process of handling attachments, although I haven’t done enough testing to report on whether this is an entirely local process. 

But I do think the use of email has now expanded so much that the assumptions about cloud storage and “reasonable” data sizes have had to be almost completely discarded. One of my customers has a 17GB Outlook data file: so big, I can’t summon up the courage to do battle with it, at least not on his old workstation PC. Even equipped with all the utilities and knowledge on offer at Slipstick, I am wary of tangling with scattered, age-old lists of vital messages interspersed with the jagged remains of deleted junk emails.

Despite my several decades of VBA experience, the state of Outlook local data isn’t something I’m inclined to dabble in. There are far too many ifs, buts, ohs, and oughtas in the readme files to reassure me that I’m taking a safe and reversible course of action with what is often a business’s most important data repository.

Why Thunderbird Supernova is winning me over

Thunderbird has no such qualms. It will go through a compaction exercise on an email folder with a right-mouse click. Zap! All that space left by deleted messages is gone. This might be for bad reasons: maybe Mozilla finds modern laptop or tablet disk volumes too miserly for the safe storage of vital messages in larger quantities, or perhaps it’s just too difficult to break the Outlook hegemony. But at least it tried. 

I now run an ancient but very lovable ThinkPad Tablet 2 with an LTE modem and Windows 10 as my email viewer and repository. Slightly fiddly with my pinky finger as scrolling and selection stylus, but far better than staring at various hula-hoops and beachballs while waiting for cloud access to reappear. Normally with a downright angry queue of holidaymakers behind me, at the airport or ferry terminal.

I expect to have two types of heckling at this news, neither of which I actually disagree with. The first is those who point out that we have been here before, with mail databases dating back to Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and many more. I can remember a certain frisson of shock at discovering that IceWarp could be set up to use a SQL Server for email message storage. Yes, various efforts to use databases for emails have been tried for decades. But I can report that if you hit an email database with a quarter of a million messages then you can quite easily break it: these days, a quarter of a million messages would be one nuclear family’s mail archive.

The second heckle is that nobody uses email anymore! This is one of those things that seems to follow the sunspot cycle, with eras of low activity followed up by eras of massive outbursts of change. After all, wasn’t Slack meant to replace email? I believe that email has found a new role: not as the main or even the first means of communication, but rather as the repository of information. It’s the place where all those horrible “follow-up copies” get sent, along with legal notices: stuff you aren’t gagging to read, but which it’s handy to be able to look back on, once the dust settles and the camera live stream LEDs go dim. 

This demands a well-designed, extremely robust, and recoverable database. Something I am pinning my hopes on Mozilla being able to deliver.

Mozilla AI, a new startup launched by the non-profit behind Firefox, aims to champion ‘trustworthy’ development of artificial intelligence (AI) amid the rapid acceleration of the generative AI space.

Mark Surman, executive president at Mozilla, told ITPro that the new company, launched last week off the back of a $30 million investment, hopes to provide a vital counterweight to the growing dominance of major tech players such as Microsoft and Google.

The move builds on a long-term focus on AI development at Mozilla and comes during what Surman described as a major inflection point for AI, akin to the early days of web development.

“Mozilla originally formed with the idea that we needed not only commercial interests, but public interest to help shape where the web would go. Mozilla has always focused on the idea that the internet should be something that’s open and accessible to everyone, and that it’s inclusive and not just controlled by a few big players,” he told IT Pro.

“The motivation behind Mozilla AI, and many of the things we are doing right now in this space, are the same."

Surman said the new startup plans to build an open-source AI stack that places trust, transparency, and responsibility at its core. It aims to enable developers to create products that offer tangible business benefits while mitigating inherent risks created by AI and automated systems.

This will include the development of tools that make generative AI “safer and more transparent” as well as “people-centric recommendation systems that don’t misinform or undermine” user wellbeing.

In addition, this trustworthy AI focus will run in parallel with the creation of an open-source community which aims to bring together developers, academics, AI researchers, and product managers across the tech industry to help shape the future of AI development.

This collaborative approach, Surman said, will help build a culture of accountability in AI development globally and address key concerns around the future of AI and its impact on both business and society.

ChatGPT safety concerns

The rapid acceleration of the generative AI space in recent months has been marked by excitement and apprehension in equal measure, Surman said.

Since its launch in November last year, ChatGPT has been hailed as a transformative technology with wide-reaching applications for businesses.

However, concerns have been raised over the potential misuse and societal impact of the technology, not least of all by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who recently warned that generative AI tech could pose a serious risk to jobs across a variety of industries.

A study from Goldman Sachs this week warned that generative AI could replace up to 300 million jobs in the US and Europe in the coming years as organisations seek to automate tasks and cut staff numbers.

"Open AI is being honest that there are risks of negative impacts with generative AI,” Surman said. “But of course, they are also the ones who are in ‘move fast and break things’ mode and rushing stuff out along with their partners at Microsoft.”

“It’s good that they’re calling that out. But this raises a question about whether the people creating the risks are doing enough to help people mitigate them, and whether they even can. I think that’s where we’re a potentially valuable addition to the ecosystem. We’re an independent party whose goal is to help people manage the risks, so I think there’s a real gap in the market as things accelerate.”

Mozilla AI: Embracing core values

Surman emphasised that the work undertaken at Mozilla AI will reflect the traditional values held at the organisation.

Having just celebrated its 25th anniversary, Mozilla has historically positioned itself as a voice for responsible web development and privacy, and a key counterbalance to the dominance of major industry players.

“When Mozilla came onto the scene, Microsoft really owned the whole web market, or had taken over the whole web market with Explorer. They had a 98% market share. And Firefox was about opening that up and giving individuals and developers choices and promoting the idea that the web could be something that belongs to everybody,” he said.

“A couple of years ago, we saw the same thing happening with AI. Many of the same issues have been clearly emerging, which is a few big players trying to lock down the marketplace in their interest.

“Just like the web, AI is going to shape how things work out in the next decade or two and shape what we build and how we build it.”

Moving forward, Surman said Mozilla AI plans to build generative AI products based on ethical principles outlined in the Mozilla Manifesto.

This, he revealed, could include embedding generative AI within products such as Firefox, its privacy-focused web browser used by more than 153 million people worldwide.

However, Surman noted that any work on this front will be pursued with a measured approach.

We’re looking at what these things mean in products like Firefox, but with due consideration to what our users want and need and how we can do this with users in mind,” he said. “That means taking a really considered approach.”

“The big tech players are rushing into things like generative AI and rolling products out to billions of people in move fast and break things mode, but that is not our style.”

Mozilla has released patches for 11 security vulnerabilities across its latest Firefox and Thunderbird versions, five of which have been assigned a ‘high’ severity rating.

The vulnerabilities affect the latest Firefox 105 version released this week as well as Firefox Extended Support Release (ESR) 102.3, and Mozilla’s open source email client Thunderbird 91.13.1.

One of the most serious bugs affects both the latest Firefox 105 and Firefox ESR browsers, potentially allowing for code execution.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-40962, was discovered by Mozilla’s own Fuzzing Team which found memory corruption issues that could have been exploited to run arbitrary code “with enough effort”.

It’s not clear what this effort might entail but code execution is one of the most serious vulnerabilities that can affect a system, allowing attackers to execute a range of tasks such as installing malware, exfiltrating data, and stealing credentials.

Wider improvements to memory handling were one of the standout new features that Mozilla delivered to Firefox with the release of version 105 earlier this week, in a addition to an overall increase browser speed.

The browser’s stability is said to be improved thanks to the way in which it now handles low-memory situations better. Mozilla said Firefox is also now less likely to run out of memory on Linux, performing better on systems when system-wide memory is low.

Some of the other high-severity issues fixed involved a pair of vulnerabilities affecting Firefox 105 were fixed due to both of them leading to potentially exploitable crashes.

In the case of CVE-2022-3266, an out-of-bounds read error could occur when a user tried to decode a video which was encoded with the popular H.264 file compression codec.

The other was a use-after-free issue again potentially causing an exploitable crash in situations where concurrent use of the browser’s URL parser with non-UTF-8 data was not thread-safe. Non-UTF-8 data refers to characters that cannot be encoded by the UTF-8 Unicode standard.

CVE-2022-40959 is a vulnerability in Firefox 105 that led to device permissions leaked to untrusted documents. This occurred when specific pages didn’t initialise their FeaturePolicy during iframe navigation.

The final high-severity flaw impacted Thunderbird and could potentially lead to JavaScript code execution.

It could be exploited if a user replied to a specially crafted email containing a meta tag which had the ‘http-equiv=”refresh” attribute and the content attribute specifying an URL. In this scenario, Thunderbird would start a network request to that URL and when combined with other HTML elements and attributes, code execution could be achieved.

“The JavaScript code was able to perform actions including, but probably not limited to, read and modify the contents of the message compose document, including the quoted original message, which could potentially contain the decrypted plaintext of encrypted data in the crafted email,” said Mozilla.

“The contents could then be transmitted to the network, either to the URL specified in the meta refresh tag, or to a different URL, as the JavaScript code could modify the URL specified in the document.”

The US’ Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) also issued an alert pointing to the security advisories for Firefox and Thunderbird, advising users and system administrators to apply the necessary patches.

Mozilla has announced three new paid subscription plans for the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) platform, designed to create greater flexibility for its members.

Called MDN Plus, the paid subscription tiers come after the Firefox maker surveyed 60,000 of its users with the majority expressing a desire for additional customisability options in their MDN experience.

Mozilla also said the move was driven by the community expressing a wish to contribute to the platform financially, having relied on it for everyday projects and resources that helped land them their first job.

Mozilla’s MDN is one of the most trusted online hubs for web developers, hosting code samples, information about web standards, tools, and other resources useful to web devs.

MDN Plus introduces three core new features to paid members including:

• Notifications: Users can be notified when their followed pages change their documentation to ship new APIs, among other things
• Collections: Users can now save specific MDN articles for reading later and share that library across all their devices. Collections will also see MDN automatically saving the pages a user regularly visits in a bid to help users find what they’re looking for more easily
• MDN offline: Paid users will also be able to access MDN while offline, a feature it believes will benefit commuters. The feature will allow users to browse the most up-to-date version of the website, access Collections and still receive Notifications

MDN plus launched on Thursday to users in the US and Canada, but a score of other countries will also be able to access the subscription tiers.

Countries soon to gain access include the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Mozilla has announced the launch of three new tiers to the MDN Plus subscription, each offering varying levels of access and benefits:

• MDN Core: A limited version of MDN Plus that’s free for a limited time so users can trial the service
• MDN Plus 5: Unlimited access to the three new features and all new features that are eventually rolled out. The price for this tier is $5 per month or $50 for a year - Mozilla is offering a 20% discount on all annual subscriptions
• MDN Supporter 10: Includes everything in MDN Plus 5 plus early access to new features and the opportunity to provide direct feedback to the MDN team. The price for this tier is $10 per month or $100 for an annual subscription using Mozilla’s 20% discount

Mozilla first started expanding the MDN platform in 2015 to focus more on learning experiences with Learning Area. The section of the site was designed for beginners to acquire the fundamental knowledge needed to kick-start their career in web development, before moving on to more advanced learning.

In 2020, Mozilla built on this initiative with the front-end developer learning pathway, a structured course that provided the information developers needed to become front-end web developers. This included courses on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and tests to cement users’ understanding.

"These two initiatives were the start of our exploration into how we could offer more learning resources to our community," said Hermina Condei, head of product for MDN at Mozilla. "Today, we are launching MDN Plus, our first step to providing a personalised and more powerful experience while continuing to invest in our always free and open webdocs."

Mozilla, Brave, and others in the world of secure web browsers have teamed up to make it easier for users to communicate their privacy demands.

With the enactment of privacy laws like California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Europe's GDPR, the internet has struggled to give users the tools they need to take advantage of their new power of privacy.

With that in mind, the team of internet-privacy leaders have developed the new Global Privacy Control (GPC), which sends signals to participating websites to inform them of do-not-sell requests, as outlined in CCPA regulations. It also sends a general request to limit the sale or sharing of a user’s personal data in accordance with GDPR.

This allows users to protect their data and privacy with just a single step instead of having to click the privacy links on each website.

To activate GPC, users can simply install an affiliated extension, like Blur by Albine, Disconnect or DuckDuckGo, on their browser. They can also download one of the participating browsers, which includes Mozilla Firefox or Brave, and more.

You can find the full list of participating browsers and extensions from the GPC website.

The Mozilla Corporation will make 250 staff redundant as part of a major structuring programme the organisation claims will be instigated as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

Due to a significant reduction in revenue against expectations, the company’s pre-coronavirus plan is no longer workable, and Mozilla has decided to reorganise itself to become smaller and more experimental.

The company will reduce its workforce by approximately a quarter, including closing its operations in Taipei, Taiwan entirely. This is alongside another 60 individuals changing their roles and teams.

“Our pre-COVID plan is no longer workable. We have talked about the need for change - including the likelihood of layoffs - since the spring. Today these changes become real,” said Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker in an internal memo to employees.

“We are also restructuring to put a crisper focus on new product development and go to market activities. In the long run, I am confident that the new organizational structure will serve our product and market impact goals well.”

The company is reducing investment in some areas such as developer tools, internal tool and platform feature development, as well as transitioning security and privacy products to its New Products and Operations Team.

This division, which sits outside of the Firefox web browser, will aim to ship new products faster and develop new revenue streams. The initial investments include Pocket, Hubs, VPN, Web Assembly, as well as security and privacy products.

Mozilla will also create a new Design and UX team to support these products, as well as a Machine Learning team that would help its products include machine learning features.

Supporting these divisions is the centralisation of Marketing to support new products as well as the core Firefox business. The engineering operations will be combined with IT, meanwhile, to create more focus and efficiency, the company claims, while a centralised security assurance function will also be established.

Decisions about how to restructure the ‘new’ Mozilla were made to increase innovation, ensure financial sustainability over a long-term period, and find new potential revenue streams that can deliver faster.

The company had already embarked on such a trajectory with the launch of its first paid-for VPN service in recent months, as well as rumours of a premium subscription-based Firefox web browser the year before.

These ventures have been delivered at a much slower pace than the Mozilla Foundation would have liked, however. Part of Mozilla’s new approach certainly means exploring ways to monetise and add a transactional element to its services.

The Mozilla Corporation’s first CEO Mitchell Baker has rejoined the company to serve as its next chief executive after Chris Beard announced his intention to resign in August last year.

Baker, who was instrumental in the creation of the Mozilla Foundation, has been serving as the company’s CEO on an interim basis since December 2019 when Beard officially stepped down from his position.

The company has been attracted to her “innate knowledge of Mozilla” alongside a sense of urgency and transparency and a focus on long-term development, which she’s demonstrated since taking over from Beard.

“We have been conducting an external candidate search for the past eight months, and while we have met several qualified candidates, we have concluded that Mitchell is the right leader for Mozilla at this time,” said Mozilla board members Julie Hanna, Karin Lakhani and Bob Lisbonne.

“Mitchell’s deep understanding of Mozilla’s existing businesses gives her the ability to provide direction and support to drive this important work forward.”

Mozilla’s strategic plan, its board members added, focuses on accelerating growth for its core Firefox browser platform while investing in innovation to tackle some of the biggest emerging challenges facing the internet.

The industry veteran was at the heart of the organisation’s inception in 2005 and served as its CEO until the start of 2008, although her ties with the company remained, and she continued to serve as its executive chairwoman.

The company has cycled through a number of leaders since. Chris Beard also initially took over on an interim basis from his predecessor Brendan Eich in 2014. He had been part of the company for more than 15 years, barring a short period in 2013.

Eich, meanwhile, was forced to leave the company after it was revealed he contributed money towards an anti-gay marriage campaign in the US.

Mozilla has moved fast to fix two Firefox browser zero-day vulnerabilities being actively exploited in the wild.

The flaws are both "use-after-free" vulnerabilities that could potentially allow attackers to execute arbitrary code or trigger crashes on machines running vulnerable versions of the Firefox browser.

The first bug, tracked as CVE-2020-6819, is tied to the browser component “nsDocShell destructor”, while the second zero-day, CVE-2020-6820, is linked to a race condition in the ReadableStream class, which is used to read a stream of data.

As per Mozilla's security advisory, the Firefox developers "are aware of targeted attacks in the wild abusing" these two critical flaws. However, details about the actual attacks where these two bugs are being exploited are still kept under wraps.

“Successful exploitation of the most severe of these vulnerabilities could allow for arbitrary code execution,” according to a Center for Internet Security bulletin.

“Depending on the privileges associated with the user, an attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than those who operate with administrative user rights.”

The discovery of these vulnerabilities was credited to security researchers Francisco Alonso and Javier Marcos. Alonso tweeted there are “more details to be published (including other browsers),” indicating these flaws likely also affect other web browsers.

Fixes are available in Firefox 74.0.1 and are also available for Firefox 68 users with version 68.6.

Mozilla patched another actively exploited Firefox zero-day with the release of Firefox 72.0.1 in January, which it also warned was being used in targeted attacks. This critical flaw, branded CVE-2019-17026, allowed an attacker to seize control of an affected computer through a mechanism that leads to ‘type confusion’.

Firefox has faced backlash over its handling of a Mr Robot-themed plugin that was automatically installed on its browser over the weekend, causing concern among some users that they were being spied on by hackers.

Reddit users reported over the weekend that a mysterious extension called "Looking Glass" had been installed on their browsers without their permission, which added text to certain websites, including phrases such as "My Reality is Different Than Yours".

Unsurprisingly, this alarmed many users who suspected the extension was some type of malicious code, particularly as they were given no indication that it had been installed, nor any information as to its function.

"I just opened my add-ons tab and found an extension called "Looking Glass"," said one Reddit user. "I have no idea what it is or where it came from. I freaked out bit and uninstalled it immediately." [sic]

However, according to Firefox, the "Looking Glass" plugin was actually a collaborative effort with the team behind the Mr Robot TV series, designed as a "shared experience to further your immersion into the Mr Robot universe".

"The Mr. Robot series centres around the theme of online privacy and security," the company added, in a statement explaining the extension. "One of the 10 guiding principles of Mozilla's mission is that individuals' security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional. The more people know about what information they are sharing online, the more they can protect their privacy."

The plugin only appeared for users who had allowed Firefox to install Shield Studies, Mozilla's preferred method for testing new features ahead of a full release. Once installed, the plugin would tweak websites, such as the placement of obscure messages, to act as clues for people playing a Mr Robot-themed puzzle game.

Unfortunately, the plugin hasn't had the desired effect across the board, with some users claiming it's an example of a company abusing its position.

"In the past I was fine with Mozilla's approach to telemetry and studies, making my browser available for occasional testing/experimenting/data collection to track down bugs or measure improvements or whatever is fine," said another Reddit user.

"This is not doing any of those things. This is an advertisement. This is an abuse of the telemetry and shield studies program. If I cannot trust Mozilla to use these tools responsibly I will have to disable them and recommend my friends and coworkers do the same."

The mysterious plugin also seems to have also taken some of Mozilla's employees by surprise, as software Dan Callahan tweeted that the "Looking Glass" plugin is a "fantastic" idea, "so long as it's opt-in".

Firefox has said the extension will now be moved to its add-on store in an effort to make it clear exactly what it does, and will no longer automatically download to browsers.

Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, Mozilla's chief marketing officer, said in a statement to Gizmodo: "Real engagement also means listening to feedback. And so while the web extension/add-on that was sent out to Firefox users never collected any data, and had to be explicitly enabled by users playing the game before it would affect any web content, we heard from some of our users that the experience we created caused confusion."

"As a result we will be moving the Looking Glass add-on to our add-on store within the next 24 hours so Mr Robot fans can continue to solve the puzzle and the source can be viewed in a public repository."

Javvad Malik, security advocate at AlienValut, said that "forcefully installing ads, or enabling plugins is a big no-no" for companies like Mozilla. "While advertising is a given in today's day and age, when it comes to the authority or actions of software, ultimately the user should be able to decide."

Photo by JeanLuz / CC BY 2.0

Mozilla has announced the the latest update to its latest browser, Firefox Quantum, which the company claims is over twice as fast as the previous version of its browser.

While being faster than the release from six months ago, thanks to an overhauled core processor and according to Mozilla, it uses less memory, meaining your computer should run faster if you're using other apps at the same time.

More than 700 developers worked on the creation of Firefox Quantum, making it one of the most resource-intensive builds yet. The company's engineers spent a lot of time looking into how people browse the internet, Mozilla said, to ensure its latest browser addresses all the challenges the average user experiences on a day-to-day basis.

The result is an overhauled interface, named Photon, which aims to bring everything together from the Firefox portfolio, making it easier for people to find what they need, when they need it.

"We looked at real world hardware to make Firefox look great on any display, and we made sure that Firefox looks and works like Firefox regardless of the device you're using," Firefox said. "Our designers created a system that scales to more than just current hardware but lets us expand in the future."

Another major new feature in Firefox Quantum is Pocket recommendations, which will offer up three recommended stories to the user when they open a new tab in the browser. These are curated from the millions of items people are adding to Pocket, to make sure it's a true reflection of the best content available on the internet. There will also be other content presented across popular topics and instant access to Pocket Explore where you can find a greater selection of content according to your favourite topics.

"We made many, many performance improvements in the browser's core and shipped a new CSS engine, Stylo, that takes better advantage of today's hardware with multiple cores that are optimised for low power consumption," Firefox added. "We've also improved Firefox so that the tab you're on gets prioritized over all others, making better use of your valuable system resources."

Firefox Quantum is available immediately for desktop on Windows, Mac and Linux, an on iOS and Android mobile operating systems.

Main image credit: Mozilla

Mozilla has made its first strategic acquisition, buying content curation app Pocket for an undisclosed amount.

The Pocket service allows users to save articles for offline consumption, as well as sharing them with friends. Mozilla bought Pocket creator Read It Later to help fuel its 'Context Graph initiative', a plan to build an Amazon-style recommendations engine, but for the whole of the internet.

"We believe that the discovery and accessibility of high-quality web content is key to keeping the internet healthy by fighting against the rising tide of centralisation and walled gardens," said Mozilla CEO Chris Beard. "Pocket provides people with the tools they need to engage with and share content on their own terms, independent of hardware platform or content silo, for a safer, more empowered and independent online experience."

Pocket brings with it 10 million monthly active users who are sharing and recommending content to each other, along with established advertising, analytics and subscription services.

However, Pocket will continue to be operated as an independent, wholly-owned subsidiary within Mozilla. Unlike a previous acquisition offer from Evernote, the takeover will not result in Pocket being subsumed into a larger product.

This is partly because Pocket is already strongly integrated into many services. It is the default offline reading service for Firefox, has successful mobile apps and was one of the first extensions available for Windows 10's Edge browser.

Pocket has expressed excitement about partnering with Mozilla. "They're adding fuel to our rocketship," said founder and CEO Nate Weiner in a blog post announcing the acquisition.

"We have worked closely with Mozilla as we partnered with their Firefox team, and established a deep trust with their team and vision," he added. "They have extraordinary resources, global scale, and reach to put Pocket in more places, and help us build an even better product, faster."

Image credit: Mozilla

Mozilla's new logo, moz://a, is throwing web browsers into a tizzy, with Chrome, Safari and Mozilla's own Firefox having issues with the rebrand.

The Mozilla Foundation this week revealed its new logo, which replaces the 'ill' with '://' in a nod to its developer community, saying "we've designed the language of the internet into our brand identity".

Apparently it hasn't done too good a job of it, as Google Chrome and Firefox both recognise the logo as a search term that yields mixed results, while Safari tries to direct the user to a webpage, before utterly failing.

The issue has generated a fresh comment thread on the non-profit foundation's website, called: Bug 1331968 - (moz://a) Make Firefox support moz://a.

"I'd imagine with the new logo, a lot of people will try typing moz://a in the URL bar. It currently does a search for moz://a," forum member Brian R Bondy wrote. "Easter egg waiting to happen? Or maybe another opportunity?"

Brad Cohen, Mozilla's senior brand strategist, said the company has sent a request to IANA, the organisation that co-ordinates internet protocol numbers and domain names, "[but] it's unclear what the timeline on those requests are".

It's also not clear what moz://a would point to, with Cohen suggesting it send users to Mozilla's blog post about the rebrand.

The free internet foundation came up with the new logo in part to change people's perceptions of the organisation, which found in a survey that 30% of people didn't know it does anything other than make Firefox, while many confuse Mozilla with the browser.

Main image credit: Mozilla

Despite the biggest search engines and browser developers saying they will stop supporting websites using SHA-1 certificates next year, 35% of companies are still using them.

Research by Venafi Labs revealed up to 61 million websites will be affected, with Chrome, Firefox and Edge all displaying messages saying the websites are unsecure when a user attempts to access them.

Other things users may experience include the websites not displaying properly, as browsers strip out non-secure elements, no green padlock appearing and in extreme cases, the websites may be blocked.

"Our whole online world is predicated on the system of trust that is underpinned by these certificates; organisations have an obligation to ensure that this is fixed," commented Kevin Bocek, chief security strategist at Venafi.

"Leaving SHA-1 certificates in place is a like putting up a welcome sign for hackers that says, We don't care about security of our applications, data, and customers."

The reason browser developers are planning to block access to sites using the outdated SHA-1 protocol is the certificates can be easily manipulated by hackers. For example, they can be intercepted and then used to launch man-in-the-middle attacks using TLS connections.

The more secure SHA-2 certificates are more robust, but it would seem some companies are holding back from updating their site security.

"The average organization has over 23,000 keys and certificates and most organizations don't have the tools or visibility to find all the SHA-1 certificates in their environment," Bocek added.

"This means migration to SHA-2 can be complex and chaotic, and, as a result, many businesses have just stuck their heads in the sand. Unfortunately, in January there will be nowhere for these businesses to hide. My advice is to get a plan in place now because it will be even more difficult to fix after the deprecation deadline when things start to break."

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Sick of stumbling across pointless 404 pages when looking for something online? Mozilla's got your back - and the Wayback Machine to help.

The Firefox maker is trialling an add-on that shows an archived version of a webpage rather than a 404 error, which is the message shown if a page has been deleted or is otherwise no longer available, but is still being linked to from other sites or search engines.

The archived pages will be sourced from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which takes snapshots of websites.

"Tired of dead ends on the web?" Mozilla asked. "We'll let you know when there's a saved version of what you're looking for on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine."

If there's an archived page available, Firefox will give users the option of viewing it, so you won't see an old page and think the information on it is up to date. And as not all websites are archived by the Wayback Machine, you'll still see some 404 pages.

The system works via a Firefox add-on or extension, which scans the text on the page to see if it's showing a 404, and then checks if the Internet Archive has a version to display.

To test the system, you'll need to be running Mozilla's "test pilot" version of Firefox, which trials experimental new features in the browser, before deciding whether they should be rolled out to everyone else. To use the add-on, you'll need to install the Test Pilot extension, and then install the 404 No More trial.

As ghacks notes, there are existing third-party add-ons that do a similar job, notably the Resurrect Pages extension, which checks for cached versions of pages. Google also lets you view cached pages directly from search result pages by clicking the drop down button next to links.

Mozilla has created an emoji game called Codemoji to help teach everyday internet users about the basics of encryption.

Users simply type up a plain-text message and then choose a single emoji to serve as the key. Codemoji will then replace the letters with emoji, so that users can send the message to a friend to decrypt by selecting the same key picked to encrypt the message in the first place.

Codemoji is certainly not unbreakable and Mozilla stresses that it should not be used as a platform for sharing personal data. It is simply intended as a tool to teach about encryption, which Mozilla describes as "the most important tool we have for building a more safe, secure internet."

"When more people understand how encryption works and why it's important to them, more people can stand up for encryption when it matters most," said Mark Surman, Mozilla's executive director, in a blog post announcing Codemoji. "This is crucial: currently, encryption is being threatened around the world. From France to Australia to the UK, governments are proposing policies that would harm user security by weakening encryption. And in the US, the FBI recently asked Apple to undermine the security of its own products."

Codemoji is the newest step in Mozilla's encryption public education campaign, which it launched in February amidst the dispute between the FBI and Apple. The campaign includes videos, blogs and activities designed to raise awareness about encryption. The company is also involved with projects like Let's Encrypt, a free, automated Web certificate authority dedicated to making it easy for anyone to run an encrypted website.

"Encryption isn't a luxury it's a necessity," said the company in a blog post about the campaign. "This is why Mozilla has always taken encryption seriously: it's part of our commitment to protecting the Internet as a public resource that is open and accessible to all."

18/05/2016:A US judge has rejected a bid by Mozilla to disclose a vulnerability, connected to its Firefox browser, that was exploited by the FBI to track child predators the dark web.

Mozilla's attempt to intervene in a case against Jay Michaud, a school administrator charged in the investigation, was shot down on Monday by US district judge Robert Bryan in Tacoma, Washington, Reuters reports.

Prior to Mozilla's request, Bryan had instructed prosecutors to disclose to Michaud's lawyers a flaw in the Tor browser, which was allegedly used by the defendant to access images of child abuse.

Tor is partially based on the code for Mozilla's Firefox browser.

The US Department of Justice asked Bryan to reconsider, citing national security, and the judge said last Thursday that prosecutors did not need to make the disclosure to Michaud.

Mozilla had sent a bid to the judge last week requesting that it be briefed on the exploit the FBI used, so that it could close down the loophole, which it said could potentially affect users of its Firefox browser.

Responding to Mozilla's request on Monday, Bryan said its request was unlikely, adding, it "appears that Mozilla's concerns should be addressed to the United States".

Michaud is one of 137 people facing charges in the US after the FBI covertly seized control of a server hosting the website in question and tracked viewers of the site through Tor in February 2015.

13/05/2016:Mozilla wants the US government to disclose Firefox hack

Mozilla has asked the US government to provide it with information about a hack it used to catch an online criminal, saying it has the right to fix any security flaw before anyone else has the opportunity to use it.

Last year, the FBI exploited a zero-day flaw in the Tor browser, which was created partially from the Firefox base code, to catch an online child predator. The government continued to take advantage of the flaw to discover more criminals in the sexual abuse ring.

However, the FBI failed to share the vulnerability with anyone - not even Mozilla - just in case it wanted to use the security hole again. It has not been revealed whether the hole has been patched or not.

"At this point, no one (including us) outside the government knows what vulnerability was exploited and whether it resides in any of our code base,"Denelle Dixon-Thayer, Mozilla chief legal and business officer wrote in a blog post.

"The judge in this case ordered the government to disclose the vulnerability to the defense team but not to any of the entities that could actually fix the vulnerability."

She explained having an unfixed flaw could prove dangerous, because other hackers could get their hands on it and use it to cause damage to individuals and companies.

"We aren't taking sides in the case, but we are on the side of the hundreds of millions of users who could benefit from timely disclosure," she added.

The FBI has also refused to provide details of the security flaw it used to access one of the San Bernadino shooters' iPhones to Apple, which has angered the manufacturer.

Mozilla has patched several vulnerabilities putting users of its Firefox browser at risk of cyber attacks.

The open source firm released version 44 of its browser on Tuesday, and issued an update listing 12 fixes on its security advisory board.

Three of those are listed as 'critical' vulnerabilities, and concern unsafe memory manipulation, buffer overflow in WebGL, and other memory safety hazards.

Another two were classified as high', which could involve an attack harvesting data from a user during their regular browsing activity. These involved address bar spoofing attacks, by which an attack could create a fake address bar when a user opened a new tab, and some code errors in the browser's Network Security Services.

The remaining vulnerabilities were listed as moderate', and included minor performance delays for file downloads on OS X and a missing delay following user click events.

Earlier this month, Firefox issued a blog update about issues some users have had with devices such as security scanners and antivirus products, after Firefox rejected sites using the SHA-1 certificate, which is in the process of being phased out.

Firefox updated its private browsing functions last year to make it simpler for users to stop companies tracking their browse usage.

Mozilla is set to test new private browsing features for Firefox that promise to block websites' abilities to record your behaviour.

The experimental new features are being launched in 'pre-beta' versions of Firefox including Firefox Developer Edition on Windows, Mac and Linux and Firefox Aurora on Android, and could make the browser more secure than rivals' own private browser modes.

"All major browsers offer some form of experience that is labelled 'private' but this is typically intended to solve the 'local' privacy case, namely preventing others on a shared computer from seeing traces of your online activity," Mozilla wrote in a blog post outlining the plans.

"This is a useful solution for many users, but we're experimenting with ways to offer you even more control when they open Private windows.

"Our hypothesis is that when you open a Private Browsing window in Firefox you're sending a signal that you want more control over your privacy than current private browsing experiences actually provide."

Website elements that will be blocked by Mozilla's private Firefox software include those that pull information from social media, analytics and more that collect data surreptitiously from users.

With the new features, Mozilla also wants to make third-party add-ons safer by introducing a verification tool that would put an end to unwanted toolbars, adjusted search settings and malware.

For the future, the blog post mentions plans such as a feature to help parents gain more control of their children's browsing experience, and a full Firefox app for iOS.

Arresting the spread of child abuse images on the "Dark Web" is to be the subject of a joint clampdown between the National Crime Agency (NCA) and GCHQ.

The government agencies will join forces to create a specialist unit tasked with tackling the problem of online child sexual exploitation and root out the most prolific offenders.

These individuals tend to rely on the anonymity afforded to them by the Dark Web to share encrypted images depicting child abuse to help them evade detection.

The two organisations claim they have successfully managed to pick apart the Dark Web to uncover paedophiles, including one who used it to pass on information to others about how to hide their behaviour online.

This individual also ran chat services and websites that shared child abuse images before his arrest and subsequent three-year prison sentence.

According to figures from the NCA, the number of UK Dark Web users has increased by two thirds in recent times, with people taking to it for privacy protection reasons as well as for nefarious purposes.

Meanwhile, new figures released by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) show there has been a marked rise in the number of web pages featuring child abuse imagery in the past year.

The organisation said the total number of URLs featuring child abuse content that have been targeted for removal between 1 January and 30 November 2014 stands at 27,850. This is 109 per cent higher than last year.

After dark

The Dark Web clampdown is sure to be welcomed by charities and campaigners who have repeatedly berated the government for failing to adequately address this area during previous attempts curb the spread of child abuse images online.

In addition to this, the government has also unveiled a package of technology measures designed to support law enforcement efforts to track down paedophiles online across social networks and popular internet services.

As part of this, the IWF is to share the "digital fingerprints" of thousands of known child sex abuse images with the likes of Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Twitter to prevent them being viewed or shared on their platforms.

Search giant Google has also developed a form of hashing technology that aids the identification of known child abuse videos, which will be made available to other technology firms in due course.

Furthermore, Microsoft, Google and Mozilla have also vowed to investigate the possibility of introducing blocking restrictions in their respective web browsers that would stop people accessing URLs linked to the spread of child abuse material.

Prime Minister David Cameron, described the introduction of these new measures as a "watershed moment" in the ongoing fight against online child abuse.

"Every time someone chooses to view an online image or video of a child being abused, they are choosing to participate in a horrific crime," he said.

"I want them to hear loud and clear, we are shining a light on the web's darkest corners; if you are thinking of offending there will be nowhere for you to hide."

Mozilla has announced MozVR.com, a virtual reality site for Firefox or "VR website about VR websites", in time for the 10th anniversary of the web browser.

The site requires the user to have a virtual reality-enabled version of Firefox (or VR-enabled Chromium builds) and an Oculus Rift headset in order to work, and is a way for browsers to preview technology demos using VR.

After releasing versions of Firefox with Oculus Rift support earlier in the year, this move sees Mozilla taking advantage of virtual reality and offering users a chance to experience such capabilities for themselves.

"As one of the first websites of it's kind, building it required that we come up with new solutions for the unique challenges of a fully immersive, three-dimensional medium," Mozilla said on the MozVR website.

"It is very important to us that the VR Web captures the feelings of flow that we love about the classic Web. So we designed a Web VR navigation interface that allows users to move from site to site without friction... Clicking a link becomes like teleportation, as one VR world dissolves seamlessly into the next."

One of the demos currently available to use by those with the right browser and headset is a 360-degree documentary on the Arctic and a fly-through of coastal British Columbia.

Developers will also be able to play around with VR for Firefox, with source code and tools and tutorials being provided via MozVR and GitHub.

Mozilla has promised support for devices other than Mac and PC is coming soon.

"This interface is still early in its evolution," it continued. "But we view it as a test bed for experimentation into the future of Web VR interaction, and are very excited to take it further."

Some of the world's biggest online companies have voiced their concerns over the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC's) plans to enable ISPs whose customers pay the most money for their connection to speed up the internet.

Companies including Netflix, Etsy, FourSquare, KickStarter, Mozilla, Reddit, PornHub and Vimeo all put widgets on their sites showing what would happen if the FCC was able to limit the speed of some internet connections and speed up others - many would have to wait for pages to load.

Meanwhile, Twitter, Tumblr and Google all issued statements against the plans, saying allowing some companies, including cable and telecom companies in the US to provide a faster service, is unfair and companies should not be able to prioritise some connections over others.

Derek Slater, Google's policy manager told the Guardian: "The internet was designed to empower people. To get online, you need to use an internet access provider. But once you're online, you decide what to do and where to go. Anyone, anywhere can share their opinions freely and any entrepreneur, big or small, can build, launch and innovate without having to get permission first."

However, supporters of the FCC's plans say that ISPs won't be able to decrease quality, but will be allowed to experiment with new business models and tiers of service - ie. allowing those who use a lot of bandwidth and pay more money for their service to access the web faster than those who are using lower-tier services.

The FCC said it has been forced to take this action because technology has evolved so fast that many people are accessing the internet using mobile devices, which does not give them the best experience.

Mozilla has launched Firefox 29 and Firefox for Android - the most customisable versions of the browser ever, according to the developer.

The beta of Firefox 29 was released in March, but now it's available for everyone and users should see the new update alert arriving soon on Mac and PC.

Firefox 29 is for desktop and apparently "reflects how you use the web today" with "an elegant and fun design, new menu, customisation mode and an enhanced Firefox Sync service powered by Firefox Accounts."

The new design includes new tabs with the one you're using at the front and others fading into the background so it's easy to see which one is in use.

The menu has moved to the right corner of the toolbar, allowing users to access all of their controls including adding a new window, saving a page, printing a page, viewing your history, using full screen mode and finding something on the page.

From here, users can also get new Firefox add-ons to customise the Firefox experience. It is also possible to remove buttons that are not in use and add new shortcuts to the items used most.

It is also possible to move many of the settings onto the toolbar, such as print screen or open new window, just by dragging and dropping and it's the same story for add-ons too. Just drag and drop from the Firefox add-ons page to where you want it to go.

The star icon can be used to create a new bookmark next to the URL bar, so when you click it, you'll see the page move into the bookmarks folder with a blue flash. This makes it possible for bookmarks to be managed from the main menu.

Firefox Sync allows end users to create an account and share everything - including passwords, open tabs, form data, history and bookmarks - across devices.

Firefox for Android has also been updated to reflect the changes in Firefox desktop, with tabs disappearing from view if not in use.

Mozilla has announced the appointment of Andreas Gal as its new chief technology officer.

"My new responsibilities at Mozilla include identifying and enabling new technology ideas from across the project, leading decision making, and speaking for Mozilla's vision of the web," Gal wrote on his blog.

Gal replaces former CTO Brendan Eich. Eich left his position as chief technical officer to serve as CEO. However, protests over political contributions to anti-gay causes led him to step down.

Eich publicly supported Proposition 8, a California law banning same-sex marriage. He refused to change his views when Firefox users discovered them.

"I prefer not to talk about my beliefs," Eich told CNET. "One of the things about my principles of inclusiveness is not just that you leave it at the door, but that you don't require others to put targets on themselves by labeling their beliefs, because that will present problems and will be seen as divisive."

Eich's replacement is a six-year veteran at Mozilla. Gal originally joined in 2008 to apply some of the research from his Ph.D dissertation and stayed to help develop Firefox OS, Rust, Servo, pdf.js and Shumway.

He is best known for building TraceMonkey, the first just-in-time compiler for JavaScript. Mozilla added it to Firefox just days before Google announced Chrome, which used a similar JavaScript engine. This began a period of intense competition between Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

Gal will lead technical decision making and manage R&D programs within Mozilla. He will also work with Firefox OS as vice president of mobile, an area which he started at the company.

He co-founded the Boot to Gecko (renamed to Firefox OS) project in 2011 to "find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are in every way the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone 7."

Mozilla is targeting developing markets by loading Firefox OS onto cheap phones that cost only 15. Though cheap, one analyst told IT Pro they were "slow and buggy."

Gal hopes Firefox OS phones will help preserve the open Web and spark innovation.

"Once Mozilla led the way with Firefox, market pressures and open standards quickly forced competitors to implement successful technology," Gal wrote.

"We are on the cusp of the same open Web revolution happening in mobile as well, and Mozilla's goal is to accelerate the advance of mobile by tirelessly pushing the boundaries of what's possible with the web."

Chris Beard has been announced as the new interim CEO of Mozilla to replace Brendan Eich who resigned at the beginning of April.

Eich was forced to hand leave the company after it was revealed he contributed money towards an anti-gay marriage campaign in the US.

Mozilla employees took to Twitter to communicate their disappointment and called for him to resign.

Beard has been actively involved with the company since it started shipping Firefox 1.0 in 2004.

He was Mozilla's CMO before being appointed interim CEO yesterday and, before that, he led the firm's product, marketing and innovation teams.

In his previous role, he was responsible for leading user, developer and community engagement activities globally, including the initial launches of Firefox on Android and Firefox OS at Mobile World Congress.

"Chris has one of the clearest visions of how to take the Mozilla mission and turn it into programs and activities and product ideas that I have ever seen," Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of Mozilla said in a blog post.

"Chris' experience and insight is highly aligned with our goals. We will continue to deliver Firefox OS to additional markets and form factors in 2014 as we demonstrate the unique user experiences that only the open Web can provide."

Baker added that Beard was a strong candidate to become CEO, although the company will be exploring other options too.

Mozilla faces many challenges and the company has to resopnd to them decisively to grow, according to Baker.

The firm will continue to work on its open web offerings, including the Firefox browser and mobile OS and the company will be using the departure of Brendan Eich as an opportunity to grow its board - first by appointing a permanent CEO and then by adding more members.

Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich has been forced to resign less than a month after his appointment, following outcry about his support of a US anti-gay marriage campaign.

Eich's promotion to CEO sparked protests from Mozilla employees who felt his views were not fit for the firm's culture of "openness".

"Mozilla prides itself on being held to a different standard and, this past week, we didn't live up to it. We know why people are hurt and angry, and they are right: it's because we haven't stayed true to ourselves," Mitchell Baker, executive chairwoman of Mozilla wrote on the company's blog.

"We didn't act like you'd expect Mozilla to act. We didn't move fast enough to engage with people once the controversy started. We're sorry. We must do better.

"Mozilla believes both in equality and freedom of speech. Our organisational culture reflects diversity and inclusiveness. We welcome contributions from everyone regardless of age, culture, ethnicity, gender, gender-identity, language, race, sexual orientation, geographical location and religious views. Mozilla supports equality for all."

The outcry surrounding Eich concerns a $1,000 (602.95) donation he made in his name and the company's, due to US law in 2008 to the Proposition 8 campaign, which supports the outlawing of same-sex marriage.

Mozilla employees took to social media to call for Eich to step down following his announcement, and three board members resigned.

Many of these employees, including Christie Koehler, Mozilla's head of education, felt Eich's views would lead to discrimination within the company. Others, such as Chris McAvoy, product lead of Mozilla Open Badges, were worried it would give the wrong impression of Mozilla, as a company.

Mozilla's new CEO is yet to be decided, but Baker said the company will have more to share next week.

The Mozilla Foundation has launched an investigation into claims that Dell had been charging its customers 16 to install Firefox on its PCs.

The browser is open source and free to download and install, however, one Dell customer discovered that the PC maker was running an "installation service" with the browser. The customer alerted the Register and sent them a screen grab of the charge.

The browser is one of the most popular on the internet and boasts around 500 million users worldwide.

Dell said that the charge was not for the software itself but the time and labour involved in installing the browser. The browser typically takes at the most, ten minutes to install.

"In this particular situation, the customer would not be charged for the Mozilla Firefox software download, rather the fee would cover the time and labour involved for factory personnel to load a different image than is provided on the system's standard configuration," said a Dell spokesperson.

"Dell Configuration Services, including the application loading service, ensure customers have a complete, ready to use product when it arrives."

However, in a statement to the press, Mozilla's vice president and general counsel, Denelle Dixon-Thayer said that there was "no agreement between Dell and Mozilla which allows Dell or anyone else to charge for installing Firefox using that brand name."

"Our trademark policy makes clear that this is not permitted and we are investigating this specific report," she said.

The service charge appears not only appears to apply to users in Europe. There are reports of US customers being offered the same service.

Investigations into Dell's practices are in their early stages, according to Mozilla.

Mobile World Congress (MWC) has brought some exciting new technology to the fore. We've seen innovation and progress on consumer-line phones, the silicon that powers them, and everything in between. Here's everything you need to know about the important stuff launched at MWC this year.

Samsung announces the Galaxy S5 specs and release date

The world will get its hands on the next generation of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S series on 11 April. With a bigger screen, faster processor, sharper camera, and PayPal-enabled fingerprint scanner, Samsung hopes the S5 can continue where its predecessors left off. IT Pro checked out its specs and spent some hands-on time with the device.

Galaxy Gear 2 smartwatch dumps Android for Tizen OS

Samsung is releasing a revised version of its Gear smartwatch just months after its initial flop. It hopes that a heart rate monitor, and improved components will make the Gear 2 and the Gear Neo successful. Most interesting of all? The watches don't even run Android. They use Tizen.

Nokia X Android smartphone family breaks cover

Nokia announced a trio of low-cost devices for developing markets: the Nokia X, X+, and XL. The three run a forked version of Android resembling Windows Phone 8 with support for Microsoft apps. IT Pro took a look at the details and liked what we saw.

Facebook chief sets out vision to grant world internet access

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about his strategy to connect the world through Internet.org. He and a consortium of other tech companies claim bringing internet access to developing markets could create 100 million jobs. IT Pro's guest editor Brendon Petsch remained sceptical, asking, "Is this a philanthropic project or a money-making exercise for Facebook?"

Blackphone emerges from the shadows

IT Pro fought the crowds around the Blackphone stand to get a look at the small smartphone making a splash with its privacy-first design. Every part of this custom version of Android works toward protecting your data.

Mozilla launches 15 Firefox OS smartphone

Mozilla revealed a Firefox OS smartphone with a microscopic price point of 15. The device can perform basic smartphone tasks. It will launch in 12 new markets in Africa and Asia. In contrast, Mozilla started talking about "Flame," its high-end reference device meant to demonstrate Firefox OS with premium hardware.

Intel unveils 2014 Atom chip line-up

Intel continues its struggle against ARM chips with two new processors. Merrifield and Moorefield boast improved performance, 4G, low-powered sensors, and high-resolution-screen support. Keep an eye out for them in late 2014.

Qualcomm showcases 10-inch 4K tablet

Chip maker Qualcomm showed off a 10-inch reference tablet with a 3840 x 2160 4K display powered by its Snapdragon 805 processor. The manufacturer wants phone makers to start using similar "Ultra HD" screens in late 2014.

HP unveils ElitePad 1000 tablet

HP took the veil off the ElitePad 1000 G2, its latest Windows slate for businesses. It's one of the thinnest tablets the company has ever made at 9.2mm thick. Business users will appreciate its repairable battery, display, webcam, and system board. IT Pro got some hands-on time and was impressed.

IBM demos Watson customer retail experience

IBM demonstrated potential consumer uses for Watson, its cloud-based service. It claims Watson can help online shoppers find more information about their queries and increase retailers' sales.

European Commission wants 5G plan in place by 2015

European Commission vice president Neelie Kroes spoke at Mobile World Congress about the need for governments and private companies to work together to bring 5G networks to Europe and the world. She said the network would form a critical part of a connected society.

Mozilla has announced a 15 ($25) smartphone, as the firm aims to gain traction in the mobile market by targeting emerging markets.

The not-for-profit organisation has teamed up with Spreadtrum, a fabless chip maker based in Shanghai, which specialises in references designs for manufacturers.

The device is powered by a Cortex A5 1GHz processor, has a 3.5in display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and two megapixel camera. The device will run the Firefox OS and be capable of performing tasks commonly used on smartphones including carrying out calls, browsing the web, receiving texts/emails, playing video.

"We're trying to bring people onlineThere are many people who are going to move from feature phones to smartphones over the next couple of years," said chief operating officer, Jay Sullivan during the launch.

There will be three iterations of the device, with slightly different specifications. No official release date has been announced, but the device is expected to launch in the second half of 2014.

Mozilla has announced it has signed agreements to bring devices to 12 new markets during 2014 bringing the total number of countries where Firefox devices are available to 27. Together with partners, the organisation is keen to break into the African and Asian markets, having debuted in Latin American and Eastern European countries.

Alcatel-Lucent, Huawei and ZTE have all unveiled new Firefox OS devices - with Alcatel also planning to launch a 7in tablet. Firefox OS will also be used by Panasonic in Smart TVs and by Via in PCs, the COO claimed.

Sullivan also debuted Mozilla's first high-end reference, which is specifically for developers. Dubbed the 'Flame' reference device it gives developers a taste of what Firefox OS is capable of with premium components.

Specs of the Flame reference device have been confirmed in full but there is no pricing. Mozilla is expected to make this available around Q2 of 2014 and it will include:

Qualcomm MSM8210 Snapdragon, 1.2GHZz dual-core processor 4.5 in display screen (FWVGA 854 480 pixels) Cameras: Rear: 5MP / Front: 2MP 3G UMTS quad-band (850/900/1900/2100) 8GB memory 256MB -1GB RAM (adjustable by developer) A-GPS, NFC Battery capacity: 1,800 mAh Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, micro USB

Developers will be able to scale-down the RAM so they can build, debug and test applications for lower-end device which are on the market.

Mozilla has released Lightbeam, a tool designed to help users understand how their data is used after they use various web services.

Lightbeam is a refreshed version of the Collusion add-on, which was launched in March last year, with the aim of providing an insight into how "data creates a spider-web of interaction between companies and other trackers".

The tool "brings to light the array of first and third party companies people interact with everyday across the web", said Alex Fowler, head of privacy and public policy at Mozilla.

When a user visits just a handful of websites, they often interact with over 100 other organisations, Fowler noted.

Once downloaded, the tool creates a real-time visualisation of visited websites and all the third parties running on those sites, which often throw cookies onto user machines.

A data map shows how these organisations are connected, whilst allowing users to share their details to help Mozilla "pull back the curtain" to see the inner workings of the Internet.

Outside of giving people more power over their data, Fowler believes Lightbeam offers benefits for publishers too. "Once the open data set has time to mature, we'll continue to explore how publishers can benefit from additional insights into the interaction of third parties on their sites," he added, in a blog post.

"With the Lightbeam for Firefox add-on and open data, we're providing a valuable community research platform to raise awareness, promote analysis and, ultimately, affect change in the areas of tracking and privacy."

The Lightbeam code has been submitted to Github, as Mozilla looks to the community to improve the service.

A security flaw has been uncovered in Google's Chrome web browser that can give anyone unfettered access to users' stored logins, and there are reportedly no plans to fix it.

The bug was discovered by software developer Elliott Kember, who found that in the password section of the browser's settings panel, saved passwords can be revealed in plain text simply by clicking a button labelled show'.

"There's no master password, no security, not even a prompt that these passwords are visible'," said Kember in a blog highlighting the problem.

Kember said while some developers are aware of this flaw, everyday users are not.

"In a world where Google promotes its browser on YouTube, in cinema pre-rolls, and on billboards, the clear audience is not developers. It's the mass market - the users. The overwhelming majority. They don't know it works like this.

"They don't expect it to be this easy to see their passwords. Every day, millions of normal, everyday users are saving their passwords in Chrome. This is not okay," he said.

However, Justin Schuch, Chrome browser security tech lead at Google, said this is not a fault and the company is not going to change it.

"The only strong permission boundary for your password storage is the OS user account. So, Chrome uses whatever encrypted storage the system provides to keep your passwords safe for a locked account. Beyond that, however, we've found that boundaries within the OS user account just aren't reliable, and are mostly just theatre," he wrote on Hacker News.

"We've also been repeatedly asked why we don't just support a master password or something similar, even if we don't believe it works. We've debated it over and over again, but the conclusion we always come to is that we don't want to provide users with a false sense of security, and encourage risky behaviour. We want to be very clear that when you grant someone access to your OS user account, that they can get at everything. Because in effect, that's really what they get," he concluded.

While many commenters agreed a master password or other additional security layer would not stop a determined and knowledgeable hacker, they argued it would help prevent crimes of opportunity.

In a Tweet, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, described the flaw as "how to get all [your] big sister's passwords" and said the reply from Schuh was "disappointing".

Another set of security bugs have also been found in the past 48 hours, this time affecting a number of Mozilla products.

The foundation has released updates for Firefox 23.0, Firefox ESRT 17.0.8, Thunderbird 17.0.8 Thunderbird ESR 17.0.8 and Seamonkey 2.20 to address multiple vulnerabilities that could, according to an advisory notice from the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT), allow hackers to remotely cause a denial of service condition, conduct a cross-site scripting attack, execute arbitrary code, or bypass restrictions.

Administrators and users of these services are advised to apply the updates in order to avoid falling victim to an attack.

Mozilla's smartphone running Firefox OS will start shipping in September after going up for pre-order in Europe.

A limited amount of devices known as the Peak+ are available to pre-order online from Geekphones, priced at 149 before tax.

The smartphones will ship with Firefox OS (v 1.1) and pack a 4.3in qHD IPS display, 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 1GB of RAM. The Peak+ includes just 4GB of internal storage, but does support micro SD cards.

Other core features include an 8-megapixel rear camera, 2-megapixel front facing camera as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 EDR connectivity.

The first wave of Firefox devices were expected to debut in emerging markets such as Brazil and Columbia. Mozilla had not yet given any time frame over when device would land in Europe.

It is unclear exactly how many are available to pre-order, but most are likely to be snapped up by developers eager to test out the capabilities of the web-based operating system.

Mozilla claims its Firefox OS is the first smartphone operating system to be built on open web standards, such as HTML 5. This will allow end users to download apps from multiple sources including the Firefox Marketplace and developer websites.

Android, iOS and Windows Phone users are generally restricted to downloading content for their devices from their respective app stores.

Mozilla isn't the only organisation trying to push open source software into the mainstream. Canonical is in the midst of trying to raise $32 million via crowdsourcing so that it can build a batch of 40,000 Ubuntu/Android smartphones.

Users will be able to use Canonical's Ubuntu Edge smartphone as a regular Android device. However, when plugged into a monitor, the handset will switch to the full desktop edition of Ubuntu, essentially acting as thin client.

Update: 26/7/2013

A statement from Mozilla appears to contradict that this will be the first Firefox OS device to land in Europe.

"Geeksphone announced the pre-sale of a new device based on Boot to Gecko technology. We want to clarify that this new phone that was announced is based on Boot to Gecko technology with pre-release software, but is not a certified or supported Firefox OS device," a spokesperson noted in a statement.

Mozilla is said to be working with gadget manufacturer Foxconn to produce a tablet based on the browser company's Firefox OS.

The Firefox OS tablet is slated to be entering the market at the budget end, pitting it against cheaper Android-based devices. A full unveiling is said to be planned for 3 June, with an industry insider telling Taiwanese publication Focus Taiwan the device would most likely be a tablet.

Foxconn or Hon Hai, as it is otherwise known, makes 60 per cent of its revenue from assembling products for Apple, such as its iPhone and iPad. It also produces devices that run Google's Android OS. Foxconn is said to be looking to broaden its client base as Apple's market share decreases, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Mozilla announced a raft of telecoms operators and manufacturers for its Firefox OS project, including Deutsche Telekom, Sprint, SingTel, LG and Huawei at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain in February.

The company has already launched smartphones based on Firefox OS. Its two devices, Keon and Peak, are built by Spanish firm Geeksphone and aimed at developers.

Google is also said to be refreshing its Nexus 7 tablet. According to reports from DigiTimes, Elan Microelectronics has begun shipping touchscreen controllers for Google's new Nexus 7 tablets. Shipments are planned for the next two months, which point to a launch of the revamped device in July. Google has not commented on the veracity of the rumours.

It is likely the new device will sport a higher resolution display, more storage and a faster processor.

Apple is also said to be planning an upgrade of its iPad Mini for the end of the year.

Open source software vendor Mozilla has issued a cease and desist notice to Gamma International for producing spyware that allegedly passes itself off as its flagship web browser Firefox.

In a recent blog post, Alex Fowler, global privacy and public policy leader at Mozilla, stated: "We cannot abide a software company using our name to disguise online surveillance tools that can be and in several cases actually have been used by Gamma's customers to violate citizens' human rights and online privacy.

"As an open source project trusted by hundreds of millions of people around the world, defending Mozilla's trademarks from this type of abuse is vital to our brand, our users and the continued success of our mission," he added.

Spyware is a type of software that tracks and gathers information about users, generally without their consent or knowledge.

Beyond data collection, spyware can also make computers vulnerable to attacks by malware and other infections.

According to Mozilla, Gamma international's software tricks users into thinking they are using the legitimate Firefox program by misrepresenting itself as "Firefox.exe".

"Not only are these activities illegal, but we take them seriously because they are deceptive, harm users, cause consumer confusion, and jeopardise Mozilla's reputation," said Fowler.

However, Mozilla has also stressed that Gamma's Spyware is entirely separate from Firefox, and does not affect the browser itself.

Gamma International had not responded to IT Pro's request for comment at the time of writing.

Sony has extended its partnership with Telefnica by signing a multi-year deal which includes the development of handsets running Mozilla's Firefox OS.

Sony is the latest manufacturer to join those already confirmed to use Firefox OS - Alcatel, LG, Huawei and ZTE. The move is unsurprising as the Japanese manufacturer is keen to diversify its mobile portfolio, which relies solely on the Android platform at this time.

The company's engineers have started working with Firefox OS, according to Bob Ishida, deputy chief executive officer and head of products business group at Sony Mobile.

"At Sony Mobile we continue to evaluate innovative technologies that can help deliver the premium user experiences that Sony's consumers expect," he said a in statement.

"[We] continue to work with our operator partners, including Telefnica, on a development project with an ambition to bring a product to market in 2014."

The Firefox OS differentiates itself from competing platforms as it is built using the HTML5 web standards.

However, it remains to be seen whether it can be anything other than a niche platform. The market already has four major platforms fighting it out for a share of the market.

The Android and iOS operating systems dominate the market, but the revamped BlackBerry 10 and Windows Phone platforms are aiming to regain ground in 2013.

The first wave of Firefox devices are set to be launched in emerging markets such as Brazil, Columbia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela. Mozilla has not yet given any time frame over when its OS is expected to launch in the UK.

Mozilla has made good on its pledge to use the power of the web to deliver a unique of smartphone operating system at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The open source software firm took the wraps off the first commercial build of its Firefox OS at the event, and said it is already working with manufacturers Alcatel, LG and ZTE to build the first slew of devices featuring the software.

These devices will be powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon mobile processers, confirmed Firefox, and Huawei is also expected to join its list of smartphone OEM partners later this year.

The first wave of Firefox OS devices will go on sale in Brazil, Columbia, Hungary, Mexico, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Spain and Venezuela. No concrete details have given about when UK consumers can expect to get their hands on one, although reports suggest it may not be until at least 2014.

Mozilla claims the Firefox OS will be the first smartphone operating system to be built on open web standards, such as HTML 5. This will allow end users to download apps from the Firefox Marketplace, as well as directly from developers' websites.

By comparison, Apple iOS, Google Android and Windows Phone users are generally restricted to downloading content for their devices from their respective app stores.

Gary Kovacs, chief executive of Mozilla, said the operating system will allow mobile users to take advantage of everything the web has to offer.

"With the support of our vibrant community and dedicated partners, our goal is to level the playing field and usher in an explosion of content and services that will meet the diverse needs of the next two billion people online," he said in a statement.

As well as OEM support, the firm has also announced a plethora of carriers, including Deutsche Telekom, Telefnica and Three, who have agreed to back the devices in emerging markets.

Tony Cripps, principal device analyst at market watcher Ovum, said Mozilla has done well to win the support of such a wide range of manufacturers and carriers so early on.

However, he described the demonstration handsets on show at MWC as "slow and buggy", suggesting they are some way from being market ready.

"The real acid test for Firefox OS and its long-term prospects is the quality of the software itself and the user and developer experiences that it fosters," said Cripps.

"The [performance issues] must be overcome before Firefox OS devices find their way into consumers' hands.

"Even low-cost smartphones the primary target market for Firefox OS can't afford to hide behind price as a justification for poor performance," he added.

The open nature of the operating system and the apparent low-cost of its devices could prove to be a major differentiator for Mozilla in the crowded mobile space, which is largely dominated by the likes of Android and iOS.

However, the firm will definitely have a fight on its hands to make its presence felt, with Microsoft making a concerted effort on the mobile front of late, and fellow open source player Ubuntu also preparing to ship smartphones and tablets running its own software.

Google has launched a viral campaign, trying to enlist public support against a proposed German law that could see it and other search engines forced to pay publishers royalties on search results.

The draft ancillary copyright for press publishers bill, which is set to be discussed late on Thursday evening, proposes that publishers could charge search engines for displaying snippets of articles that are under 12 months old in search results, or even sue them for copyright infringement.

If snippets and headlines require license fees ... search engines could (and likely will) simply remove the publishers from their index.

Google has hit back with a campaign called 'Defend your net - Will you be able to find what you are looking for in the future?', which warns users that the legislation could put a stop to easy access to information online. The campaign also includes a video that had been viewed approximately 80,000 times in just two days, showcasing the most important news searches from the last few months of the type that could be blocked by the new bill.

German lawyer Igor Barabash, who specialises in copyright law, told

Outlaw.com the campaign was "pretty clever", presenting information on the proposed changes to the law from a pro-Google' point of view and connecting users directly with the law makers.

Such tactics have been seen to work in campaigns run by pressure groups such as Avaaz and 38degrees.

Barabash also stated he believes Google chose to launch a pre-emptive campaign to prevent the draft bill being brought into force due to the difficulty and time consuming nature of trying to get enacted laws repealed.

"Bringing in the public opinion and therefore putting additional pressure on the government and the Bundestag would be the next logical step," Barabash said.

Mozilla, which derives almost all of its revenue from search engine deals, leant its backing to the Google campaign.

"Adopting such rules may be bad for users and the web. If snippets and headlines require license fees, the ability to locate information may be curtailed as search engines could (and likely will) simply remove the publishers from their index," the company said in a blog post.

However, the two biggest parties in the German government rebuked Google for its actions, saying "it is remarkable that a company would use the public for its own economic interests."

Google and Mozilla have joined the raft of companies opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the PROTECT IP Act (Pipa) in the US.

Various tech giants have criticised aspects of the two bills, Pipa going through the US Senate and Sopa in the House of Representatives.

Wikipedia and Wordpress have both shutdown for the day in protest, whilst other firms such as Rackspace and Twitter have voiced their opposition to Sopa and Pipa.

We oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites.

Google claimed the acts would censor the web, handing powers to law enforcement to filter the web and block access to tools that would bypass such filters.

"We know from experience that these powers are on the wish list of oppressive regimes throughout the world," said David Drummond, Google's senior vice president for corporate development and chief legal officer, in a blog post.

"Sopa and Pipa also eliminate due process. They provide incentives for American companies to shut down, block access to and stop servicing US and foreign websites that copyright and trademark owners allege are illegal without any due process or ability of a wrongfully targeted website to seek restitution."

Google also claimed the acts would not stop piracy, as pirate sites would simply change their addresses.

The internet giant has highlighted this issue on its US home page and is asking people to petition congress via a special landing page.

"Like many businesses, entrepreneurs and web users, we oppose these bills because there are smart, targeted ways to shut down foreign rogue websites without asking American companies to censor the internet," a Google spokesperson said.

Mozilla has chosen to redirect traffic from Mozilla.org to an action page for 12 hours. Visitors will be presented black page with a call to action message to increase awareness of Pipa and Sopa.

The action will run from 13:00GMT today through to 01:00 GMT tomorrow.

"While we generally support the end goal of the legislation to limit online piracy of legitimate content we believe that both Pipa and Sopa, in their current drafts, have serious flaws in the proposed implementation of the legislation," said Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla, in a blog post.

"Among them is the requirement for online service and content providers to police the system. This would create an undue burden on businesses that were not designed for this purpose, would require more lawyers to be involved, and would extend the hand of government much deeper into these organisations."

Kovacs claimed the acts would "spread a chilling effect across the web that would significantly limit innovation."

Sopa has been shelved for the time being, but Pipa could still pass through the Senate.

The Wikipedia blackout is not as comprehensive as the company may have liked. Firefox users can simply add the NoScript add on and disable JavaScript to access the site.

Mozilla has extended its lucrative search deal with Google, ensuring it won't miss out on big money for at least the next three years.

It means Google will remain the default search provider in Firefox. The initial partnership ended this year and without this week's extension Mozilla could have been in financial danger.

Last year, 84 per cent of Mozilla's revenue came from Google.

"Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world," said Gary Kovacs, CEO of Mozilla.

"Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come," added Alan Eustace, senior vice president of search at Google.

The deal comes in the same week Firefox 9 was launched, with Mozilla claiming it would deliver a 30 per cent speed boost thanks to improvements in JavaScript.

The speed boost comes thanks to the Type Inference feature in the latest iteration of Firefox.

"TI is a feature in the SpiderMonkey Javascript engine which generates type information about Javascript programs through a combination of analyzing the program's code and monitoring the types of values as the program executes," said Brian Hackett, Firefox engineer, in a blog post.

"This type information is used during JIT compilation to generate more efficient code; Firefox 9 includes modifications to the JaegerMonkey JIT compiler to use inferred type information."

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has proposed a number of new standards designed to let users know when they're being tracked online.

W3C wants to see companies and browser makers jump on board to make 'do not track' functionality widely available. It also hopes to let users know when websites aren't complying with user privacy preferences.

The first two drafts of the standards - the Tracking Preference Expression and the Tracking Compliance and Scope Specification were released yesterday.

"Smarter commerce and marketing strategies can and must coexist with respect for individual privacy," said Dr Matthias Schunter, from IBM Research and co-chair of the W3C Tracking Protection Working Group.

"Open standards that help design privacy into the fabric of how business and society use the Web can enable trust in a sustainable manner."

A number of big-name tech companies are involved in the working group, including Apple. The iPhone maker came under fire earlier this year for a tracking function in its phones.

Smarter commerce and marketing strategies can and must coexist with respect for individual privacy.

It has been taken to court by incensed users across the world. Thousands were looking for compensation in South Korea.

A number of browser makers have already sought to include 'do not track' features in their products, including Google and Mozilla, both of whom are also in the working group.

"'Do not track' puts users in control, so they can choose the tradeoffs that are right for them," said Aleecia McDonald, Mozilla Foundation and co-chair of the Tracking Protection Working Group.

"I congratulate the working group members on meeting this milestone and I am delighted by the constructive discussions we have had as we work to reach consensus decisions."

Meanwhile, UK companies are hoping to be in line with cookie laws by 25 May 2012. They will have to gain consent from users before downloading cookie files onto systems and track them.

Those who don't comply with the law could be slapped with a 500,000 fine, although many websites are yet to get in line.

Mozilla has made Firefox 6 available on both desktop and mobile, with a host of new features and security updates.

One significant addition is the Web Developer menu, designed to provide "easy access to tools that help developers build and debug websites directly in the browser."

"Developers will enjoy the new Scratchpad tool, which makes it simple to quickly enter, execute, test and refine JavaScript snippets in Firefox without needing to work in a one-line console," Mozilla said in a blog post.

"The Web Console is improved with an auto-complete feature and the ability to customise the console's location to save developers time."

Mozilla has made some API updates too, including the addition of the Window.matchMedia API, created to help developers "optimise their website or Web app across different devices and platforms."

Seven security updates were announced, five of which were ranked as critical.

One of those related to a number of memory corruption issues. "We presume that with enough effort at least some of these could be exploited to run arbitrary code," Mozilla said.

The release comes as part of a Mozilla commitment to delivering updates to its browser every six weeks.

To get the update, all users need to do is click on "check for update" under the "About Firefox" menu or wait for the prompt from Mozilla when uploading Firefox.

In other browser news, yesterday NSS Labs released a report indicating Internet Explorer was preventing more socially engineered malware attacks than any of its competitors.

The Microsoft browser scored a 96 per cent mean block rate, far ahead of Chrome in second place on 13.2 per cent.

Mozilla is working on its own mobile operating system to go up against the likes of Apple and Google.

The Firefox creator will use some of the same code as found in Android, much of it will be written from scratch, according to the BBC.

Mozilla will watch over the so-called Boot to Gecko (B2G) project, which will see a community of developers working on the mobile OS, with the source code to be released in real-time.

Gecko is the name for the rendering engine used in Firefox.

"We propose a project we're calling Boot to Gecko (B2G) to pursue the goal of building a complete, standalone operating system for the open web," the company said in a website post.

The firm admitted there is plenty of work to do, including the creation of APIs to work with all kinds of devices and operating systems.

"This project is in its infancy; some pieces of it are only captured in our heads today, others aren't fully explored," the company said.

"We're talking about it now because we want expertise from all over Mozilla - and from people who aren't yet part of Mozilla - to inform and build the project we're outlining here."

Mozilla wants to create a truly open technology, with no proprietary claims over it - something which researcher Andreas Gal thinks Google does not offer.

"We want to do Boot to Gecko the way we think open source should be done. In the open, from day one, for everyone to see and participate," Gal said on a discussion forum.

"Android APIs are proprietary Google sauce, not broadly accepted and adopted open web standards."

The 'open versus proprietary' battle in the mobile OS space has been keenly followed by onlookers.

In particular, people have noted the insecurities of an open system when compared to a proprietary model. There have been a number of prominent stories on Android threats, yet few on vendor-controlled platforms such as iOS.

Mozilla has been talking up work it is undertaking to bring multi-process content support to Firefox.

The web software developer said the work would help to prioritise as well as measure when it might be ready to ship a version of its browser that uses a multi-process model.

The details, outlined in a blog posting late last week, have led to observations that Mozilla is following a similar multi-process architecture development path to the one Google took for its Chrome browser.

The Chrome architecture uses a procedure known as 'process isolation' to separate processes allocated to each site instance and plugin.

The blog of Chris Blizzard, Mozilla web platform director, said the company realised it was going to have to invest in a multi-process model.

While multi-process development was not a panacea for further development work on performance, as well as multi-core and memory behaviour areas, "it does give us a leg up on some of the more systemic problems," he wrote.

Although Blizzard stood by the most recent release of Firefox 5 as a "great browser from a responsiveness standpoint."

"We know that if we want to separate chrome and content concerns that we're going to have to go to multi-process," he added.

The posting cited ongoing development work to use separate processes to display the browser user interface (UI), web content, and plugins in project Electrolysis as key to improving levels of responsiveness.

It also pointed to the importance of support for multi-core processors in desktops, laptops and increasingly mobile devices, as an important reason for also moving away from requiring content to have single-threaded domain object model (DOM).

"One of the easiest ways to take advantage of multiple processors is to have each DOM assigned to its own processor, and the easiest way to do that is to have a few processes that can each be assigned to their own CPU," Blizzard wrote.

Mozilla also said it was investing in longer-horizon projects to examine what a multi-threaded DOM and layout engine might look like.

In security terms, Blizzard admitted that having the ability to talk to the "more privileged" chrome process could still result in exploits that have raised permissions.

He admitted it wouldn't protect one website from another malicious website.

"But it is a positive step forward, and is well worth the investment," he added.

Mozilla late yesterday launched a new experimental project, called BrowserID, to make it easier for users and developers to handle the sign-in process for websites.

The project uses existing email addresses to replace the login and password details for all of the sites a user may want to log into, such as Facebook, Google or Twitter.

Described by its development team as a "snazzy passphraseless login flow," the project uses a new Verified Email Protocol' from Mozilla that is based on public key cryptography.

Dan Mills, Mozilla Labs engineer, said in a blog posting that the open source protocol enables the project to offer this new approach to universal login.

"Sites get proof of ownership using public key cryptography," he wrote.

"But don't worry, we have a verification service so you can get started without writing a single line of crypto code."

When a user logs into a website BrowserID intercepts the request, allowing them to choose any one of the email addresses they must have already registered with the service in order to authenticate their login.

The one-time verification of email addresses when a user first registers with BrowserID allows the service to use crypto keys in order to vouch for the user's ownership of them, so the website that the user is signing into does not need to.

The success of the service will be largely reliant on getting email service providers to get involved. In return, they will be able to access the data collected on the sites that users log into using BrowserID.

But Mozilla said this would still be a more secure method of password management, as the data will only reside on BrowserID servers.

While single sign-on systems like OpenID have been around for some time now, Mozilla said BrowserID offered a better alternative to identity token-based protocols because its keys worked with the authentication service already provided with email accessed via the web.

In the wiki documentation describing the Verified Email Protocol, Mozilla stated: "A number of web-scale identity proposals start by creating a new identity token for example a user ID or personal URL and go on to describe how to use that token to authenticate the user."

By using existing email addresses, Mozilla claims its system eliminates the need to register an identity token every time the user wants to log into a new website. It said this would make it easier for users and developers to adopt.

And the prototype uses JavaScript and HTML to enable its use on the latest web and mobile browsers.

The company has launched a new website to host links to the BrowserID source code and specifications, designed to encourage end users and website owners to get involved.

Mozilla has sought to address cooled relations with business users by saying focusing on the needs of individuals results in widespread enterprise use by loyal browser fans.

Last week, Mozilla product manager Asa Dotzler stirred up a hornets nest when he said Firefox was aimed primarily at consumers and the company was less interested in business users.

Microsoft then stepped in in to assert just how business-friendly its Internet Explorer browser, actually is and that the software giant sees it as being "about and not or" when it comes to focus on consumers and enterprise users.

Open Source software is well-suited to these challenges, as interested parties can come together to build what is needed.

The latest twist comes from the Mozilla blog, where Jay Sullivan, vice president of products claimed the needs of the individual user have always been a primary focus. However, he added by improving the individual experience the browser has made its way into the enterprise world organically with "loyal" users introducing Firefox to their workplace.

"A key challenge for enterprises is that they need to certify their websites, apps and add-ons each time Firefox is updated," he said.

"This can take weeks or months. Security is also paramount, enterprises need access to a version that includes all known security fixes."

Mozilla also clearly recognises the issues businesses face. Sullivan indicated Mozilla was looking to work with enterprises to counter some of these problems, particularly in relation to the new six-week fast development and rollout cycle.

"We are exploring solutions that balance these needs, with active discussion in our community," he said.

"Open Source software is well-suited to these challenges, as interested parties can come together to build what is needed."

Microsoft has waded into the latest

Firefox debate, saying its Internet Explorer browser is focused on both business users and consumers, rather than one or the other.

Last week, Mozilla courted controversy, after Firefox product manager Asa Dotzler stated the company was more interested in consumers' needs.

We believe that all Windows customers should have a great browsing experience, whether they stay at home, go to school, or work in a large organisation with managed IT resources.

"It's about and not or," said the headline on Microsoft's IEBlog where Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president for the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft, made a post offering an alternative viewpoint to Mozilla's consumer focus.'

"We believe that all Windows customers should have a great browsing experience, whether they stay at home, go to school, or work in a large organisation with managed IT resources. Because all these groups of Windows customers are important to Microsoft," he said.

The circumstances seem ideal from a marketing perspective, although it should be noted Asa Doztler, the Mozilla manager who lit the touchpaper on consultant Mike Kaply's blog, actually spoke favourably of Internet Explorer in his posts.

"IE9 is a fine browser and probably better suited to those who want long-term support," he said.

"It'll always be behind the consumer browsers (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera) but it does offer enterprises a more conservative and slow-moving option."

Hachamovitch was less flattering of the opposition and described Mozilla's outlook as "the tyranny of OR".

"We ship updates to five versions of IE across seven operating systems with 14 Service Pack variations to customers in 96 languages worldwide every eight weeks," he boasted.

"We do this because it's what many customers need to fulfill their missions, safely, reliably, and in compliance with the requirements they have."

A Firefox manager has enraged business users by suggesting they're not as important as consumers when it comes to the popular browser.

The acceleration of Mozilla Firefox's development and release cycle has sparked controversy and amongst the complaints are those from business users lamenting the lack of stability, compatibility and compliance.

One such platform for these views is consultant Mike Kaply's blog, where he described the setbacks of such rapid advancement.

After Firefox 4, which took over a year to release, the browser platform was quickly usurped by Firefox 5 only a few months later and Mozilla officially declared Firefox 4 was at end of life' (EOL), a turn which Kaply described as "a kick in the stomach."

"While the rapid release process sounds great, it's an absolute fail for large deployments of Firefox," he said.

Asa Doztler, community coordinator for Firefox marketing and founder of Mozilla's quality assurance scheme, responded to the comments on the blog saying enterprise had "never been (and I'll argue, shouldn't be) a focus of ours."

"We get about 2 million Firefox downloads per day from regular user types," he said.

"Today, I argue, we shouldn't care even if we do have the resources because of the cost benefit trade," he claimed, "A minute spent making a corporate user happy can better be spent making many regular users happy."

"I'd much rather Mozilla spending its limited resources looking out for the billions of users that don't have enterprise support systems already taking care of them," he said.

Some users responded with concerns about the inconvenience of rapid EOL, even for non-enterprise customers, when Doztler revealed the development cycle would be fast-tracked to six weeks. One commenter asked if there were any assurances Firefox 5 wouldn't reach immediate EOL on the release of Firefox 6, possibly only six weeks later.

"My promise that it will happen," Doztler responded, "Firefox 6 will be the EOL of Firefox 5. And Firefox 7 will be the EOL for Firefox 6."

A release candidate build of the new Firefox 5 browser has popped up for download on Mozilla's ftp server and is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.

While the final browser is presumably being tinkered with ahead of its release on Tuesday 21 June, this candidate build is a full version of the software and has sprung up early for users to experience.

Firefox 5 isn't a big landmark update with only slight modification over its predecessor here and there easier and faster access to some of the more advanced privacy features is touted as one of the main changes.

Mozilla has lived up to its promises with a quickened pace of release, with only a three month gap since Firefox 4. This has allowed it to keep pace with customer demand and in line with competitors such as Google.

However, with Chrome leading by example with its auto-update feature - which is especially convenient for more low-key, less ground-breaking updates such as this latest Firefox build - it may leave users wondering when Mozilla will follow suit.

The latest version of Firefox broke the 100 million download mark over the bank holiday weekend.

Mozilla claimed Firefox 4 hit the impressive number on Saturday, with current figures standing at around 105 million.

Although the open source organisation celebrated its own achievements, it couldn't resist taking the opportunity to knock down its rivals.

Asa Dotzler, community co-ordinator at Mozilla, posted a graph on his blog showing Firefox 4's market share smashing through the eight per cent barrier, whilst its direct Microsoft rival Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) sat at roughly three per cent.

"I'll bet we see a nice uptick in the Firefox 4 trend when we actually start to communicate its availability to users of older Firefox versions," he said. The company plans to "prompt" users of Firefox 3.5 and 3.6 to upgrade over the next 10 days.

Firefox 4 was plagued with bugs and faced several delays before its launch back in March. However, the first 24 hours saw the browser downloaded more than six million times.

Mozilla is already working on the follow up browser Firefox 5 and has sped up the development process to get the release finalised by 21 June this year.

Nokia shows Symbian some love

Love it or loathe it, the Symbian mobile operating system gets our sympathy after being ditched by Nokia for the trendy new kid in town, Windows Phone 7.

However, it seems Nokia didn't want to part on bad terms and this week made a peace offering in the shape of an update.

Along with Symbian Anna, the Finnish manufacturer also released two new handsets to be based on the OS.

It was a sweet attempt to paper over the cracks, but there is no hiding the fact Symbian has taken the backseat to the flashier Microsoft boys.

Browser wars again

It seems the minute one battle is over between the latest releases from Mozilla and Microsoft, we can scarcely draw breath before the next one kicks off.

This week saw both browser giants give some hints towards their next updates of Internet Explorer and Firefox, along with a ramped up release schedule.

Mozilla confirmed Firefox 5 would land in June, whilst Microsoft released a preview version of IE10, both just a month after the previous generation was unleashed.

It makes us tired thinking about even more updates, but then Google's six week Chrome cycle should have prepared us.

PC market going bust?

The Marmite of the technology world award has to go to tablets. However, they seem to have won another accolade this week as the sole destroyer of the PC market.

OK, sole' is probably too strong, but both IDC and Gartner showed PC shipments declining in the first quarter of 2011 and the growth of tablets was cited as a pretty major factor.

We have seen plenty a tablet creeping into our offices and numerous displays all over the tube, but wiping out the home PC? I think we will need to see a few more quarters of decline until we are convinced

The next version of the Firefox browser will be released in June, Mozilla has confirmed.

Firefox 5 will see the usual development process accelerated, with development time falling from six weeks to three, and the aurora channel and beta stages dropping from six weeks to five.

This is possible as Mozilla is taking a new approach, adding new features on the go whilst the phases overlap.

It has also been very strict about bug fix times. Any feature not completed by the end of one cycle will be backed out and held back until the next release.

These new rules may be as a result of multiple set-backs in the run up to the launch of Firefox 4. Numerous delays due to bugs and extra release candidates pushed the unveiling back to the end of March, instead of February as originally planned.

However, the download figures rolling in have left a lot for Mozilla to be smiling about. In the first 24 hours, it was downloaded over six million times and research from Net Applications last week showed it had better market share than Microsoft's rival release, Internet Explorer 9.

The expected date of release for Firefox 5 is set as 21 June and, if the company pulls it off, this could lead to Firefox 6 being ready to download as soon as August.