Spyware, viruses, & security forum: Mozilla Firefox 12.0 - April 24, 2012

Mozilla has announced the official release of Firefox 12. In the latest release, Mozilla has included the previously announced update service for Windows that spares users the User Account Control (UAC) pop-up. As Firefox is installed in the Programs directory, it requires higher privileges for updating.

Instead of asking users for the required privileges via UAC, it now uses the Mozilla Maintenance Service to update program files. Firefox executes the service with system privileges when it is needed and closes it after the update. An Access Control Entry (ACE) in the update service allows Firefox to launch it with system privileges even though the browser itself does not have them.

Users can enable or disable the service in the Firefox menu under Options > Advanced > Update ("Use a background service to install updates"). When this service is combined with the "Automatically install updates" option, Firefox takes care of version maintenance on its own for the most part. If users don't want to be warned when an update may disable incompatible add-ons, they can also uncheck the corresponding box. [Screenshot]

The final result should be an almost silent update that, at most, only alerts users after an update has been successfully applied. How well this actually works will not be known until Firefox is updated to version 13 in six weeks time. For Mac OS X and Linux, Silent Updates are currently planned for version 14. Google's Chrome browser has updated itself since its initial release, and Microsoft has also been experimenting with updating Internet Explorer through Windows Update without users having to do anything.

Continued : http://www.h-online.com/security/news/item/Firefox-12-released-can-now-update-itself-1546370.html

but this new update is in response to corporate and business IT Admins who felt the frequent release of new versions of Firefox caused them more and difficult work where they had to step through the updates on each of their machines because of UAC.

This way Firefox updates itself and causes less problems for those IT guys while at the same time keeps itself secure against new vulnerabilities and threats.

But easy to turn off and I have done so myself in Options > Advanced tab then the Updates sub-tab.

Mark

I've just been advised that Mozilla have added a "Service" to the OS list of Services called "Mozilla Maintenance Service", (Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services).

It is a Service that is not set to run automatically but is used by Firefox whenever an update is due to be installed to get permission from Windows to install without going through UAC.

The service otherwise uses no resources. Although it can be disabled from starting at all, doing that will mean that Windows will continue to display the UAC permissions request whenever an update is due to be installed.

It can also be disabled in FF > Options > Advanced > Update sub-tab and removing the tick for "Use a background service to install updates".

I've left mine on.

Mark

According to Mozilla version 12 is only the first step towards the silent updates. It is expected to be implemented in its entirety, no later than Firefox 14.

The addition of the "Mozilla Maintenance Service" is only the first step. There should be a separate folder of its own in Programs Files. Read more about it in Mark's most recent post..

Carol