The Mozilla Foundation released a new version of its flagship Firefox browser to patch a known JavaScript Engine flaw.

The vulnerability has been confirmed in Firefox 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, can be exploited by malicious people to gain knowledge of potentially sensitive information.

You can download Firefox 1.0.3 Here

From time to time ISPs experience DNS outages. In the last week Comcast customers experienced sporadic, nationwide outages.
If you experience DNS problems, there is a very simple work around. You can change your DNS settings to a different DNS server or simply use a proxy.

Proxy is a Server placed between a user’s machine and the Internet. It can act as a firewall to provide protection and as a cache area to speed up Web page display. When you use proxy server the requests are going thru another server, which in order to solve your DNS problem, has to work with a different ISP, and as such is not subject to your ISP’s outage.

Setting up proxy server is very simple.

• First you need to find such server. Luckily there are web sites which lists public proxy servers, one recommended site is: http://www.samair.ru/proxy/
  After you go to that site and save you a copy of the list somewhere on your hard drive (so you can access the list when your are experiencing an outage), Pick one proxy – you might want to pick one that is not in your country, so it won’t be affected from your ISP’s outage.
• Now you need to set your browser to use this proxy.
  In IE, open Tools->Internet Options. Go to the Connection Tab and click on the Lan Settings button.
  Click on the Advanced Button , and in the HTTP: input field write the proxy IP address and port number.

  In FireFox go to Tools->Options. On the General tab click on Connection Settings button.
  Check Manual Proxy Configuration and in the HTTP proxy fill in the proxy address and port number.

NOTE: It is important that you use a real IP address and not a domain name, so your browser will know how to connect directly to the proxy without relying on your ISP’s DNS server.

• Click OK.

Now you have configured a proxy and you can continue to surf the net.

Note: Some of the public proxies are not reliable and tend to disappear after a while, hence it is important that you update your proxy list once in a while, and remember if one proxy is not working, you can always try another proxy, until you find one that works.