Firefox patches 'moderately critical` flaws

The Mozilla Foundation has released its first security update to Firefox, designed to prevent spoofing and phishing attacks, and fix glitches that cause the browser to crash.

According to InformationWeek, the Firefox 1.0.1 update covers a number of security vulnerabilities and approximately 40 other fixes related to browser performance based on user feedback to Mozilla. The security vulnerabilities range from "moderately critical" in nature to not critical.

The security update can be downloaded immediately, and will be available within a few days via Firefox`s automatic update feature, says Mozilla engineering director Chris Hoffman. "I would encourage users to get this release, especially if they`ve been prone to phishing attacks or spoofing. A lot of work in this release focuses on those areas."

Microsoft is offering some of its data-mining and anti-spam technology - expected to be included with Microsoft`s impending SQL Server 2005 database - for use in the ongoing research to find more effective HIV vaccines.

The software giant said its researchers would work with the University of Washington and the Royal Perth Hospital in Australia to identify patterns of genetic mutation in the immunodeficiency virus and in the immune systems of HIV patients. The researchers hope to use this information to propose designs for new HIV vaccines.

According to CBOnline, the project is designed to illustrate how medical experts can exploit data-mining and anti-spam technology to sort through millions of strains of HIV to find genetic patterns and improve vaccines.

Seagate yesterday launched a 1-inch 6GB hard drive targeted at the music player market in a bid to expand its smallest form-factor hard drive family.

The company`s 1-inch drives were previously only available in 2.5GB and 5GB capacities, reports TechSpot. The new drive should start to appear in products from Creative, Olympus, Rio, Sanyo and Virgin.

The announcement was expected, as Apple recently outlined plans to use Hitachi`s new 6GB 1-inch drive from Hitachi in its iPod mini.

Sony has built the ability to order pizza into its latest online multiplayer game, AP reports.

By typing the command "/pizza" while playing Everquest II - a fantasy game with 330 000 active players - gamers are connected to the Pizza Hut Web site, where they can place orders for delivery.

In the future, Sony plans to integrate the pizza function more tightly into the game so that players can charge pizza to their monthly game subscription bill, says Sony Online Entertainment spokesman Chris Kramer.