Alert: Firefox release cycle may be a exposure for users.

I read the following article about Mozilla Firefox 4 being end-of-life. Whilst quick release updates are understandable, not providing support for the users of previous versions of the browser and potentially exposing them is a real concern.

Mozilla has openly admitted it's focusing on consumers at the expense of businesses, after accelerating the release cycle of Firefox... Read More

As I understand by the articles I’ve read, once Mozilla makes a version of Firefox end-of-life it is no longer supported. If not being supported means there won’t be any security updates that could be a concern. I for one don’t know exactly what “no longer supported” really means, but I get a feeling it may mean no more work it done on the release. If that is the case I’d consider that to be a major problem.

Right now just 8% (according to my logs) of Firefox users are using Firefox 5. Since Firefox 4 has now been made end-of-life, that means around 49% of Firefox users (according to my logs) won’t receive security updates and that’s potentially an exposure for many people and that’s a concern.

I once read there were approximately 300 million Firefox users. If as the article states there are 2 million people downloading Firefox a day, if there are nearly half the users using Firefox 4, that means it would take three months to in theory to fully roll everyone over to Firefox 5. That is a long time to run with unpatched software in this age where a major focus of hackers is to infect web sites to infect unsuspecting users’ computers.

Yes, Firefox users can easily update to the latest version of Firefox, but the reality is many don’t for whatever reason and those people should not be exposed.

I thought I’d flag this for those using Firefox that they should at least determine their exposure.

- Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au