Mozilla programmers are rewriting a lot of the Firefox code for the upcoming version release of the open-source browser, according to the head of product security at Mozilla. Most of the components in the current version of Firefox are being touched, said Window Snyder, "chief security something-or-other" at Mozilla. She added that programmers are replacing a lot of older code to increase performance, make the code base more modular and handle new security threats, like phishing and malicious Web sites.

"As we're doing this, we're considering security features and trying to minimize security issues," said Snyder in an interview with InformationWeek. "The Web browser has always been an entry point into the system, so it's been considered a critical application. The environment changes so we need to adapt."

Snyder noted that some components that are written in native code are being rewritten in managed code to reduce memory management flaws, like buffer overflow vulnerabilities. Managed code executes in a virtual machine, so there is less space for memory management issues to occur.

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Source: InformationWeek via MSFN