Even as Firefox 3 moves into beta, Firefox 2 is getting a security makeover.

The Mozilla Quality Assurance Community has called for volunteers to help test Release Candidate Builds of Firefox 2.0.0.10, which is expected to be released next week, following the Thanksgiving holiday.

Firefox 2.0.0.10 addresses a Java Archive handling bug that was first reported back in February. The vulnerability allows a malicious attacker to conduct a cross-site scripting attack by hiding exploit code in a Java Archive (.jar) file. This is because the .jar protocol is not restricted to .jar files and will open .zip files, which can be malicious.

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Chicago drivers have a new way to pay for gasoline: with their fingertips.

Ten Shell gas stations in the Windy City are testing biometric systems that let consumers walk up to the pump, scan their fingertips on a device and fill up their vehicles. The systems, also installed at Shell convenience stores, are directly linked to customers’ checking or credit-card accounts for payment.

“When we talk to customers, they’re always looking for ways to make buying gasoline quicker and easier, and always looking for ways to make their transactions faster and more secure,” said Chris Susse, Shell’s manager of global refueling innovations. “They don’t want to carry more cards, kits and keychains, and they want it to be free.”

Customers will be able to initially scan their fingerprints at a kiosk inside the gas station and can link payment information either at the store or online.

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For people who appreciate finer laptop accoutrements such as a backlit keyboard and a slot-fed DVD drive, Apple has crafted another tasty offering in the form of the 17-inch MacBook Pro. Sleek, powerful, and able to run Windows as well as the Mac operating system, the MacBook Pro makes a strong case for becoming anyone’s ultimate notebook.

Equipped with a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo T7700 processor, the maximum 4GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive, and nVidia’s new top-of-the-line notebook graphics card, the nVidia GeForce 8600M GT, our $2949 test unit set new speed records. The MacBook Pro outperformed the rest of the notebooks we tested, all of which claim Windows as their primary–nay, their only–operating system. We loaded Windows Vista Home Premium on the Apple notebook, and it snagged a WorldBench 6 Beta 2 score of 88. In games it achieved a blazing frame rate of 141 frames per second in Far Cry (with antialiasing turned off).

At 6.6 pounds and just 1 inch thick, the MacBook Pro is the lightest 17-inch notebook available. But it has no memory card slots and only three USB ports, and it comes configured with an ExpressCard/34 slot instead of the more versatile ExpressCard/54 slot. Though it has Bluetooth and 802.11n Wi-Fi, built-in cellular broadband is not an option. On the other hand, video editors will be happy to have not one but two FireWire ports. Battery life was disappointing: Apple pegs it at 5.7 hours on one charge, but in our tests we got less than 2 hours, 45 minutes.

Nevertheless, the MacBook Pro is elegantly designed and remarkably mobile for a 17-inch notebook.

– Carla Thornton, PC World

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A crew of hackers (including hdm/metasploit, rezn, dinopio, drudge, kroo, pumpkin, davidc, dunham, and NerveGas) have introduced a one-touch instant jailbreak for both iPhone and iPod touch. The jailbreak opens your iPhone for full disk access and installs Installer.app so you can add pretty much any third party application you like.

To use it, open Safari and point your browser to jailbreakme.com (which we aren’t linking to so folks won’t install this by accident, but you are prompted to confirm). Once there, read the directions, scroll to the bottom, and tap Install AppSnapp. If Safari disappears and you return to the main Home screen, you’re good. Just wait a minute more for your unit to restart–don’t touch anything until you see the slide to unlock screen. If Safari hangs, just quit out (press and hold Home for 4-8 seconds) and try again.

Once you get to slide-to-unlock, go ahead and unlock your iPhone or iPod touch. You’ll return to your home screen which will contain a new Installer.app icon. If you’ll want to ssh into your unit, install the BSD subsystem, Community Sources, and then install Open SSH–you may need to upgrade Installer.app (thanks Ste). With Open SSH and sshfs (part of Mac Fuse), you can open Finder windows that offer direct drag and drop access to your phone or touch.

The jailbreak really is as easy as it sounds. I restored my iPod touch and jailbroke it just a few minutes ago and it worked great.

UPDATE: Please try to do this using WiFi rather than EDGE. Success rates are much higher!

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