Mozilla pulls Firefox 16 update over security flaws

Browser maker Mozilla has been forced to withdraw its Firefox 16 browser upgrade after numerous security flaws were discovered.

The firm had touted the availability of the new version of the platform on Wednesday. But the firm's director of security assurance, Michael Coates, said in a blog post that vulnerabilities had come to light, forcing the firm to pull the update for now.

"Mozilla is aware of a security vulnerability in the current release version of Firefox (version 16). We are actively working on a fix and plan to ship updates tomorrow [Friday]," he said.

"Firefox 16 has been temporarily removed from the current installer page and users will automatically be upgraded to the new version as soon as it becomes available."

Coates urged those that had downloaded the update already to downgrade to version 15.0.1 or sit tight and wait for the patch to be released.

The issue revolves around the risk that users' browsing information could be accessed by third-parties and used for ill-gain, although Coates said the firm did not believe there was any direct risk as yet.

"The vulnerability could allow a malicious site to potentially determine which websites users have visited and have access to the URL or URL parameters," he said.

"At this time we have no indication that this vulnerability is currently being exploited in the wild."

The issues is another notable security issue in the week after a worm targeting Skype users with spam messages designed to infect machines with the Dorkbot ransomware was discovered.

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