Thousands of people oppose the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), including the Obama Administration and “Anonymous.” The bill, which was recently passed by the United States House of Representatives, looks to give businesses and the federal government legal protection to share cyber threats with one another in an effort to prevent online attacks. Internet privacy and neutrality advocates feel as if the bill does not contain enough limits on how and when private information can be monitored. Numerous technology companies — such as Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, IBM, Intel and Oracle — have voiced their support for the bill. Mozilla on Tuesday, however, took a stand and announced its opposition against CISPA.

“While we wholeheartedly support a more secure Internet, CISPA has a broad and alarming reach that goes far beyond Internet security,” the company’s privacy and public policy lead said to Forbes. “The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that are too broad around information misuse. We hope the Senate takes the time to fully and openly consider these issues with stakeholder input before moving forward with this legislation.”

Mozilla’s Mountain View neighbor, Google, has yet to make its stance known, and is one of the last tech firms to do so. “We think this is an important issue and we’re watching the process closely but we haven’t taken a formal position on any specific legislation,” a company spokesperson said. The Internet giant has previously spoken out about the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), even going as far as censoring its homepage and urging visitors to oppose the bill.

Internet monitoring firm Pingdom on Monday released a new report on global Web browser share by browser version. The company found Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 to be the most popular browser in North America with a 21.2% share, and it was closely followed by Google Chrome 18 at 20.2%. Internet Explorer, however, featured a combined total of 40.4% of the North American browser market. Globally, Pingdom found that Chrome 18 is the most popular browser with a 25.6% share, leading Firefox 11 with 15.8% and Internet Explorer 9 and 8 with 15.7% and 14.6%, respectively. Microsoft’s browser has the largest worldwide market share when all versions are combined, followed by Chrome and then Firefox.

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Russian university student Sergey Glazunov was able to hack into a secure Windows 7 machine using a remote code execution exploit in Google’s Chrome web browser in five minutes, ZDNet reported Wednesday. The exploit was found during CanSecWest’s Pwnium hacker contest, a competition similar to the popular Pwn2Own contest. Google offered a total of $1 million dollar in prize money to hackers who could exploit the company’s Chrome web browser. Glazunov was rewarded $60,000 for his exploit, which found a way around Chrome’s sandbox using vulnerabilities in the extension system. “It didn’t break out of the sandbox [but] it avoided the sandbox,” said Justin Schuh, a member of the Chrome security team. “It was an impressive exploit. It required a deep understanding of how Chrome works. This is not a trivial thing to do.” At Pwn2Own, the VUPEN team was able to hack all four major browsers — Google Chrome, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Apple Safari and Mozilla Firefox — with Chrome, which was hacked within five minutes, being the first to fall. This is the first time in four years at the competition that Google’s web browser has been hacked. The company is already working on an update that will fix the vulnerabilities uncovered at Pwnium and Pwn2Own.

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Mozilla announced on Monday that it will release a Metro-specific version of Firefox for Microsoft’s upcoming Windows 8 platform. The browser will require “a new Firefox front end and system integration points” and be based on the Gecko layout engine. “The feature goal here is a new Gecko-based browser built for and integrated with the Metro environment,” said the company’s planning document. “Firefox on Metro, like all other Metro apps will be full screen, focused on touch interactions, and connected to the rest of the Metro environment through Windows 8 contracts.” The company may also produce a live tile that would display updates on the home screen. Mozilla hopes to unveil its new browser in the second quarter of 2012.

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Mozilla on Tuesday released the latest version of its Firefox browser. In addition to allowing users to run full-screen apps, Firefox 10 offers the following enhancements:

• The forward button is now hidden until you navigate back.
• Most add-ons are now compatible with new versions of Firefox by default.
• Anti-Aliasing for WebGL is now implemented.
• CSS3 3D-Transforms are now supported.

Mozilla also made some HTML5 changes and noted two bug fixes. The company said that it has fixed a Java-related crash, which Mac OS X users experienced in earlier versions, as well as a crash related to moving bookmarks. Firefox 10 is available immediately as a free download.

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Mozilla released Firefox 9 on Tuesday, the latest version of its popular web browser. Firefox 9 adds several enhancements, but perhaps the most notable is its improved JavaScript engine that reportedly offers up to a 30% performance boost (in Kraken and V8 benchmarks) on Javascript-heavy sites. The browser also adds OS X Lion optimizations that should improve two-finger swipe navigation and theme support. Other features include support for font-stretch, improved support for text-overflow, improved support for HTML5, MathML and CSS, and stability fixes. Firefox 9 is available for free now and builds are available for Mac, Linux and Windows.

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Mozilla announced Tuesday that it has reached an agreement with Google in which Google Search will remain the default search engine in Firefox for the next three years. “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,” said Google’s senior vice president of search, Alan Eustace. While terms of the agreement remain confidential, Mozilla reported in October that its partnership with Google helped the company achieve a large portion of the $123 million in revenue in reported last year, CNET said.

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Mozilla’s latest version of it’s popular Firefox web browser saw rapid adoption following its release last week. Firefox 8, the fifth major release of the Mozilla browser so far this year, became available for download on November 9th. Within one day, the new iteration had already grown to account for 7% of all Firefox traffic across Chitika’s ad network, the company reported on Tuesday. By the end of the browser’s first week of availability, Firefox 8 claimed 35% of all Firefox traffic.

“This is yet another testament to Mozilla’s recently adopted rapid release process, particularly made evident by the fact that first seven versions of the browser took seven years to release,” Chitika’s Gabe Donnini wrote on the company’s blog. “Firefox 8 is a well-polished version which builds off of the functionality offered by its predecessors, and brings a whole slew of new features to the table.”

As of the end of October, Firefox was the second most popular web browser in the world according to data from Net Applications, claiming 22.52% of all web traffic. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer remained the world’s top browser with a 52.63% share.

A new research report from Chitika Insights suggests Chrome, Firefox and Safari are eating away at Microsoft’s dominant share of the web browser market. Internet Explorer’s overall share dropped from 56% in July to 54% in August while Firefox’s market share increased from 19% to 20% and Safari’s share grew one point to 9%. Between July 2010 and July 2011, however, Microsoft’s browser share remained steady at 56%. Google’s Chrome web browser saw its share increase from 9% to 16% year-over-year at the expense of Firefox and Safari, which lost 5% and 1% of the market, respectively. Chitika said it expects Firefox’s share to increase as Mozilla continues to release frequent updates to its web browser. In addition, Internet Explorer’s share will “stabilize from its recent losses” when Microsoft releases Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.

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Mozilla on Tuesday pushed out a new version of its popular Firefox web browser for Windows and Mac computers. Mozilla released Firefox 6 on August 16th, just over one month ago, and version 7 is already upon us, reaffirming Mozilla’s commitment to the world’s second most popular web browser. Firefox 7 brings with it a host of changes, the most notable of which is perhaps “drastically improved memory handling” and other speed related improvements. As of August, Net Applications shows Firefox’s global browser share as 22.57%, behind Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (55.31%) and ahead of Chrome (15.51%) Safari (4.64%) and the Opera browser (1.68%). Firefox 7 is available for download immediately from Mozilla’s website, which is linked below.

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According to the analytics firm StatCounter, Google’s Chrome web browser now has a 20.7% grip of the web browser market — seven times more than it had just two years ago. The boost comes at the cost of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser, which now has less than a 50% hold on the market. Mozilla’s Firefox web browser has a 28% share of the browser market, down from 30% two years ago, and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer share fell to 44% from 59% two years ago. According to Reuters, StatCounter gathers its data from more than 3 million websites with more than 15 billion page views.

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Mozilla on Tuesday finally issued the new public release version of its wildly popular Web browser, Firefox. Version 5 of Firefox wasn’t met with quite the same fanfare as Firefox 4, but the update is a major one nonetheless. Mozilla bills its new browser as being faster than ever with “even more awesomeness,” and we can’t say we disagree. Firefox 5 has received massive improvements aimed at providing speedier performance, and the UI has been redesigned and improved as well. Firefox’s “do not track” feature also works across mobile and desktop platforms now, and Mozilla has improved support for MathML, HTML 5, XHR, and SMIL as well. Other areas targeted by the new build include CSS animation and JavaScript support, and Mozilla has promised more frequent updates so more new features shouldn’t be far off. According to Net Applications, Mozilla’s Firefox browser was used by 21.71% of the global market in May, second only to Internet Explorer’s 54.27% share. Chrome, Safari and Opera rounded out the top-5 with 12.52%, 7.28% and 2.03%, respectively.

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Flock, the social web browser that was purchased by Zynga earlier this year, has announced that it is shutting down. The team will instead focus on helping Zynga build socially connected games across multiple platforms. If you’re a Flock user, the good news is that you’ll be able to continue to use the product for a few more days as you transition to a new browser. Flock says that, after April 26th, key features will no longer be available, and it also warned that security will falter without future software updates or upgrades. The team recommends that current Flock users switch to Firefox or Chrome. Hit the jump for instructions on how to migrate your favorites and other features to a new browser.

[Via AllThingsD]

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On Tuesday, Mozilla released the latest version of Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo smartphones. Firefox 4 now includes support for Firefox Sync, which allows you to sync open tabs, history, bookmarks, passwords, and other data, between your computer and your smartphone. The new Firefox allows for tabbed browsing, add-on installation, and features a new, streamlined look. Mozilla says it will also automatically hide the browser controls when they aren’t in use, which should allow users to view more of the website you’re parked on. There’s also options to save PDFs, share pages, and customize the default search engine. Mozilla says that Firefox 4 is up to 3x faster than the stock Android browser. Firefox 4 for Android is available in the Market now, and the Maemo version can be downloaded here.

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