Firefox 108 arrives with various improvements for developers and more

Announced the release of the new version of Firefox 108 along with the long-term branch update of version 102.6.0″. In this new version, in addition to innovations and bug fixes, there have been fixed 20 vulnerabilities in Firefox 108.

16 vulnerabilities are marked as dangerous, of which 14 vulnerabilities (collected under CVE-2022-46879 and CVE-2022-46878) are caused by memory issues, such as buffer overflows and access to already freed memory areas.

These issues can potentially lead to the execution of malicious code when specially crafted pages are opened.

The CVE-2022-46871 vulnerability is associated with the use of code from an outdated version of the libusrsctp library, which contains unpatched vulnerabilities.

The CVE-2022-46872 vulnerability allows an attacker with access to a page rendering process to bypass sandbox isolation on Linux and read the contents of arbitrary files by manipulating IPC messages associated with the clipboard.

Main new features of Firefox 108

In this new version of the browser that is presented, we can find that added Shift+ESC keyboard shortcut to quickly open the process manager page (about:processes), which allows you to assess which processes and internal threads are consuming too much memory and CPU resources.

Another change that stands out in the new version is that settings were added cookiebanners.bannerClicking.enabled and cookiebanners.service.mode to about:config to automatically click on banners that request permission to use cookies on the sitess. In the nightly builds interface, switches have been implemented to control automatic clicks on cookie banners in relation to certain domains.

In addition to that, we can also find that Web MIDI API addedWhich enables interact with connected music devices to the user's computer with a MIDI interface from a web application. The API is only available for pages loaded via HTTPS and calling the navigator.requestMIDIAccess() method with MIDI devices connected to the computer prompts the user to install the plugin.

Also in this new version of Firefox 108, we can find the optimized frame scheduling animation under high load conditions to improve MotionMark scores, as well as providing the ability to use characters in languages ​​other than English when printing and saving PDF forms.

For the part of the improvements in the Android version It is worth noting that the ability to save a web page as a PDF document, Implemented support for grouping tabs in a panel (tabs can be swapped after long-pressing on a tab) and provided a button to open all bookmarks for the specified section in new tabs in a new window or in incognito mode.

Regarding the improvements for developers we can find that an additional experimental site permission mechanism has been proposed to control site access to potentially dangerous features and APIs that require extended and harmful privileges with capabilities that can physically damage hardware, make irreversible changes, be used to install malicious code on devices, or leak user data. For example, in the context of the Web MIDI API, a permission plugin is used to grant access to an audio synthesis device connected to a computer.

Of the other changes:

• CSS provides a set of trigonometric functions sin(), cos(), tan(), asin(), acos(), atan(), and atan2().
• CSS implements the round() function to select a rounding strategy.
• CSS implements the type , which allows you to use familiar mathematical constants, such as Pi and E, as well as the values ​​of infinity and NaN, in mathematical functions. For example, "rotate (calc (1rad * pi))".
• JavaScript has added the Array.fromAsync method to create an array from data received asynchronously.
• Added a new domContentLoaded event that is called when the content has finished loading.
• Added forceSync option to .get() method to force sync.
• Implemented a separate area of ​​the dashboard to place additional WebExtension widgets.
• Added support for the Emoji 14 character specification.
• The OES_draw_buffers_indexed WebGL extension is enabled by default.
• Implemented the ability to use the GPU to speed up Canvas2D rasterization.
• On the Windows platform, sandbox isolation of processes that interact with the GPU is enabled.
• Added support for SIMD FMA3 instructions (multiply and add with a round).
• Background tab processes on the Windows 11 platform now run in Efficiency mode, which causes Task Scheduler to lower the execution priority to reduce CPU usage.
• Implemented support for the correct color correction of images, according to ICCv4 color profiles.
• The “Show only in new tabs” mode to show the bookmarks bar (“Show only in new tabs”) for empty new tabs has been guaranteed to work correctly.

How to install or update the new version of Firefox on Linux?

Firefox users who have not disabled automatic updates will receive the update automatically. Those who don't want to wait for that to happen can select Menu> Help> About Firefox after the official launch to initiate a manual update of the web browser.

The screen that opens displays the currently installed version of the web browser and runs a check for updates, provided the functionality is enabled.

Another option to update, is yes you are a user of Ubuntu, Linux Mint or some other derivative of Ubuntu, You can install or update to this new version with the help of the browser's PPA.

This can be added to the system by opening a terminal and executing the following command in it:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-security/ppa -y 
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install firefox

In the case of Arch Linux users and derivatives, just run in a terminal:

sudo pacman -Syu

Or to install with:

sudo pacman -S firefox

Finally for those who prefer to use Snap packages, they will be able to install the new version by opening a terminal and typing in it

sudo snap install firefox

Finally, you can get the browser with the latest installation method that was added "Flatpak". To do this, they must have support for this type of package.

Installation is done by typing:

flatpak install flathub org.mozilla.firefox

For all other Linux distributions can download the binary packages from the following link.