Mozilla

Can Wi-Fi Owners See Your Google Search History? HTTPS, DNS, SNI and ECH Explained

A viral social media video sparked widespread concern that Wi-Fi owners could view users' search history and visited sites simply by knowing the router password. Security experts from Cybernews and Surfshark clarified that modern HTTPS encryption prevents reading of actual search queries or page content. However, metadata such as DNS requests, SNI fields in TLS handshakes, and device MAC addresses remain visible to the network administrator. The introduction of Encrypted Client Hello (ECH) under RFC 9849 aims to hide domain names, yet Russian authorities have blocked many ECH-enabled connections since November 2024. Corporate or school-managed devices with installed root certificates represent the main real-world exception where full traffic inspection is possible. VPNs hide destinations from the local router but transfer visibility to the VPN provider. The article emphasizes that password-protected Wi-Fi grants access only to connection metadata, not browser history.

Mozilla Firefox 156 Optimizes JPEG Image Handling to Cut Memory and CPU Usage

Mozilla has released Firefox 156 featuring optimizations for processing large JPEG images on web pages. The browser now consumes less RAM and CPU time when sites display downsized versions of high-resolution photographs. The improvement targets scenarios where images are scaled down by page scripts rather than decoded at full size first. No single percentage improvement is provided because results vary with file sizes, image counts, and hardware. A separate enhancement makes the built-in PDF viewer launch up to 45 percent faster, with the biggest gains on first open when components load. The update becomes available on September 15 for supported desktop platforms and can be obtained through the About Firefox menu.

Mozilla Adds Built-in Ad Blocker to Firefox for iOS Devices

Mozilla has integrated a native ad-blocking feature directly into its Firefox browser for iOS. The update allows iPhone and iPad users to block third-party advertisements and associated trackers before web pages load, eliminating the need for separate extensions. Apple’s App Store policies have long restricted the use of third-party content blockers on iOS compared to desktop and Android platforms. The new functionality targets intrusive elements such as pop-up windows, content-overlapping banners, and other advertising formats. By handling blocking at the browser level, Firefox for iOS improves user privacy and reduces exposure to tracking mechanisms without requiring additional software installation.

Mozilla Revokes GPG Signing Key After Accidental Upload to Private GitHub Repository

Mozilla has replaced the GPG key used to sign certain Firefox and Thunderbird builds following an accidental exposure of the unencrypted secret key in a private GitHub repository. The key was intended for signing Linux archives, RPM packages, and checksum files, raising theoretical risks of supply-chain attacks through forged installers. Company audits found no evidence of external misuse, as repository access was limited to a small group of employees who already held legitimate access to the key. Most users require no action, though those manually verifying GPG signatures must import the new key along with revocation data for the old one. Linux administrators installing Firefox via RPM packages on distributions such as Fedora, RHEL, Rocky Linux, AlmaLinux, openSUSE, and SUSE may need to manually update the key to avoid installation failures. Thunderbird users are unaffected by the RPM issue since no official RPM packages are released for the email client. The new key remains valid until August 5, 2028, with public details available in updated KEY files and on keys.openpgp.org.

Firefox JIT Vulnerability Exposes Tor Browser Users to Remote Code Execution

A high-severity flaw in Firefox's SpiderMonkey JavaScript engine allows remote code execution simply by visiting a malicious page, directly impacting Tor Browser users on unpatched versions. Registered as CVE-2026-10702, the vulnerability stems from incorrect memory handling in the JIT compiler that leaves a dangling reference to freed memory, enabling arbitrary read and write primitives. Researchers demonstrated successful exploitation that can compromise the browser's content rendering process and facilitate user deanonymization or OS-level attacks. The same issue served as the initial stage in the IonStack exploit chain against ARM64 Android devices, where it was chained with CVE-2026-43499 in the Linux kernel to achieve root privileges. Mozilla addressed the issue in Firefox 151.0.3, and the Tor Project rolled out corresponding fixes in Tor Browser 15.0.19, which also incorporates the latest Firefox ESR updates.