Mozilla releases patches

The Mozilla Foundation's Mozilla Messaging has released patches for five flaws in its Thunderbird e-mail client that were disclosed several weeks ago, states Secure Computing.

The latest version of Thunderbird, version 2.0.0.14, fixes bugs in the Firefox engine, used by the open source e-mail client to render HTML content. The Mozilla Foundation corrected identical problems in its Mozilla Web browser in March.

Mozilla Messaging rated the bugs in this round of patches as "moderate", stage two in its four-stage vulnerability-rating system. When fixed in Firefox, these vulnerabilities were originally labelled "critical".

Instant messaging (IM) attacks leapt 162% in April, according to security firm Akonix. The company tracked 21 new malicious code attacks over the month, says InfoWorld.

The jump accompanies a boom in take-up of enterprise unified communications systems (UC) over the past few months, a fact that is unlikely to be a mere coincidence, Akonix said.

Analysts Butler Group reassured enterprises in a report earlier this week that UC does not open up any new means of attack, but Akonix said the recent spike in IM attacks indicates just the reverse.

According to Computer Business Review, Tibco Software has released an addition to its messaging technology, a new hardware messaging appliance specifically designed to accelerate the capabilities and performance of its Rendezvous software.

According to the company, this integrated hardware/software combination will offer improved application-to-application, ultra-low latency messaging throughput for mission-critical data.

It is also said to help organisations reduce the amount of server space required to run the Rendezvous software by a 10 to one ratio, cutting data centre power use and optimising space and resource utilisation.