Netscape patches 1-day-old browser

[Nomad559]

Netscape patches 1-day-old browser

A day after launching Netscape 8 and touting the browser's security features, Netscape has released an update to fix several serious security flaws.

The original Netscape 8, released early Thursday, is based on version 1.0.3 of the open-source Firefox browser. Netscape thought the new browser was immune to security vulnerabilities in the Firefox software that were fixed last week in Firefox 1.0.4. It turns out Netscape 8 is vulnerable.

http://secunia.com

[billbuckhead]

1. This new Netscape browser is a combination of Explorer and Mozilla

Netscape Browser 8.0 Released
Thursday May 19th, 2005
America Online today launched Netscape Browser 8.0, the first major update to its flagship browser since Netscape 7.0 was released in 2002. Based on Mozilla Firefox, this latest release can render pages using either the Gecko or Internet Explorer layout engines. Other new features include Site Controls (per-site security settings), the MultiBar (a toolbar for personalised content), a new way of automatically filling in forms and a quick way of clearing private data like the browsing history. Unlike previous releases, Netscape Browser 8.0 is just a Web browser (no email application, newsgroups client or Web page editor), though it does include an integrated AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ client. As AOL laid off the Netscape browser development team in 2003, most of the programming work for version 8.0 was outsourced to Canadian firm Mercurial Communications.
AOL is heavily promoting the new Site Controls feature, which lets users select a rendering engine and enable or disable functionality like ActiveX, cookies and JavaScript based on whether or not they trust a site. Every hour, the browser downloads predefined Trust Ratings from Netscape's trust partners (VeriSign, TRUSTe and ParetoLogic), allowing it to automatically set the security settings for a large number of sites. By default, trusted sites (large legitimate businesses and the like) are rendered with the Internet Explorer engine to provide what Netscape calls "maximum compatibility". All other sites are rendered using Gecko (referred to as the Firefox engine in the user interface) by default. At the untrusted end of the scale, Netscape enables "maximum browser security" (turns off features like JavaScript and cookies) and displays scary warnings if you attempt to visit a phishing site or other similarly dodgy page.

<http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article=6662>

Sounds like it combines the weaknesses of both browsers. Another AOL screwup.