Fans of the popular Firefox browser can now download version 95, an update that Mozilla says includes performance and power efficiency improvements as well as a focus on security.
According to the release notes, this update includes “reduced CPU usage on macOS in Firefox and WindowServer during event processing,” while power usage during video playback from sites like Netflix has also been improved.
Beyond that, new security improvements see Firefox now use WebAssembly to “isolate potentially-buggy code” while adding a layer of zero-day protection, too.
This technique, which uses WebAssembly to isolate potentially-buggy code, builds on the prototype we shipped last year to Mac and Linux users. Now, we’re bringing that technology to all supported Firefox platforms (desktop and mobile), and isolating five different modules: Graphite, Hunspell, Ogg, Expat and Woff2.
Going forward, we can treat these modules as untrusted code, and — assuming we did it right — even a zero-day vulnerability in any of them should pose no threat to Firefox. Accordingly, we’ve updated our bug bounty program to pay researchers for bypassing the sandbox even without a vulnerability in the isolated library.
Existing Firefox users can download the update now, while new users can get in on the ground floor by downloading direct from the Mozilla website, too. Firefox is considered by some to be the best Mac browser around right now and is definitely worth checking out if you’re keen to test something other than the pre-installed Safari or more mainstream Chrome.
