Mozilla Corporation wants to get the security community involved in ironing out possible bugs with the next version of Firefox at an earlier stage.

Instead of pointing out security bugs once Firefox 3.0 gets released, Mozilla wants security vendors involved while the software in still a work in progress.

Window Snyder, the "chief security something" or head of security strategy at Mozilla Corporation, explained: "We want to encourage the security community to get involved earlier, at the design and implementation stage. There's a wealth of information we can share."

Mozilla has run a security bug bounty program offering $500 as a thank you to researchers who unearth security bugs since 2004. In addition to this, commercial vendors send in bugs as they are discovered. A team of around 70 volunteers in the Mozilla development community perform triage and work on the development of security fixes.

Reports from Snyder's appearance at the ShmooCon hacker conference in Washington last month suggested Mozilla Corp thought security researchers had too much power in the security remediation process.

Snyder was keen to emphasise that Mozilla wasn't looking for special favours while reiterating the need for security researchers and suppliers to work together for the benefit of the community.

"Vendors need to be responsive and work with researchers," Snyder told El Reg. "If vendors are not responsive I can understand why someone believes their only option is to release details of a vulnerability before there's a patch. Users are better protected if vendors work with researchers.

"The onus is on vendors but security researchers ought to more flexible about how long it might take to get out a patch, which might take more time if application compatibility issues are discovered."

Snyder said Mozilla's work with the security community could be further improved if researchers got involved in the development process of Firefox 3 and subsequent releases of the open source browser. The first alpha version of Mozilla Firefox 3 (Gran Paradiso) was released in December as part of the testing and development process leading up to a release, penciled in for November 2007.

Firefox 3 is to feature an updated layout engine, Gecko 1.9, as well as a revamped system for managing browser bookmarks and history, an improvement originally scheduled for Firefox 2.0 but dropped before the release of the software last October. ®

Related stories

• Mozilla guns for Guinness world record with Firefox 3.0 (28 May 2008)
• Updated Mozilla pilots second release candidate for Firefox 3.0 (27 May 2008)
• Mozilla hits back at Firefox 3 quality slur (19 November 2007)
• Black Hat Making open-source browsing safe for the masses (2 August 2007)
• Linkedin spurns bug bounty hunter (31 July 2007)
• Flaws galore in IE and Firefox (5 June 2007)
• Mozilla quashes Firefox JavaScript peril (1 June 2007)
• Insecure plug-ins pose danger to Firefox users (1 June 2007)
• Thunderbird 2 is go (19 April 2007)
• Brief Opera brings 'speed dial' to browsers (12 April 2007)
• Mozilla: security researchers have too much power (26 March 2007)
• Firefox fix lances memory corruption bug (26 February 2007)
• Firefox hands out cookies from strangers (15 February 2007)
• Review Firefox 2.0: happier browsing, but secure? (30 January 2007)
• IE 'unsafe' for 284 days last year (5 January 2007)
• Firefox 3 alpha unleashed (11 December 2006)
• Firefox outshines IE in phish fight (15 November 2006)
• Mozilla brainstorms Firefox 3.0 (16 October 2006)
• IE market share: What's going on? (12 October 2006)
• Mozilla security takes axe to redundant code (15 September 2006)
• Firefox fans offered name check (17 July 2006)
• Firefox and Mac security sanctuaries 'under attack' (19 September 2005)