Software-Firefox's Project Fission will protect you from Spectre-style CPU flaws

A total overhaul

Firefox developer in Mozilla's Berlin office. Image credit: Mozilla

Mozilla is working on an overhaul of Firefox, known as Project Fission, that will help protect your data from security flaws like Spectre and Meltdown.

Spectre and Meltdown were vulnerabilities found in several processors from Intel, ARM, and AMD. Although it seems that they were never exploited, they could have allowed hackers to access private information including passwords and encryption keys (a risk is known as a side-channel attack). Most alarmingly, these flaws had been present in chip designs for over 20 years.

Mozilla acted immediately and released an update to prevent malicious web pages reading private data. Now, the company is working on a project called Fission that will strengthen the browser and protect users from any similar vulnerabilities found in future.

• Firefox is following Chrome and Edge's example by muting auto-playing videos
• You might soon see recommended extensions while browsing with Firefox
• Mozilla has closed its Firefox Test Pilot program

Project Fission has been in progress for several months, but developers have just announced that a release called Milestone 1 will appear later this month.

Safer browsing

There's no word yet on when Firefox Fission will be finished, but elements will be released in Firefox Nightly builds when they're ready.

"We aim to build a browser which isn't just secure against known security vulnerabilities, but also has layers of built-in defense against potential future vulnerabilities," Mozilla said in a blog post.



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