Although an official date has yet to be announced, Mozilla took a step closer to the next major release in its Firefox web browser series last week with Gran Paradiso Alpha 8. A preview to Firefox 3.0, this eighth alpha release contains a bevy of highly anticipated security enhancements. Firefox extensions, which do not always use secure methods when performing auto-updates, have been a cause for concern because of the ways they can be exploited. Although extensions hosted on the official Mozilla site are safely updated, some third-party hosts have not been as careful in this regard. The result has a been a troubling security loophole in which malware and viruses can be masked as extension updates and therefore silently installed on a victim's computer. Alpha 8 addresses this weakness by requiring the update delivery mechanism to either look for a digital signature or to utilize SSL.

Also included in this release is built-in malware protection as well as several bug fixes and UI adjustments. Gran Paradiso Alpha 8 is available for download and is only intended for use by members of the development and testing community.