Five hours after the latest version of Firefox was officially released by Mozilla, a researcher detected a bug in the browser and reported it to the Austin, Texas security vendor, Tipping Point. Tipping Point later said that it has verified and reported the bug to Mozilla but declined to reveal details about the program as Mozilla is working to fix the bug.

According to Tipping Point, the vulnerability is critical in Firefox 3.0 as it gives access to remote attackers to take control of user's PC. The earlier version, Firefox 2.0 is also affected by the security flaw in the latest version.

Firefox 3.0 was downloaded more than 8.3 million times in its first 24 hours of availability setting new records but Mozilla must be feeling pretty stupid with a critical bug being discovered within five hours of its launch.

Tipping Point has said that it will publish an advisory on its website once the bug gets fixed. For some reason, Mozilla authorities preferred to stay away from the media and Microsoft spokespersons were too busy laughing to answer the phone.

The vulnerability only affects people clicking on email links on Websites, so only 100% of users and 100% of sites will be affected.

No need for panic, then. X