After the latest security update of Mozilla Firefox 70 warns the users if their saved logins were exposed in data breaches. Read on to know more…
After the recent security update of Mozilla’s Firefox, a new feature will warn users about their compromised login credentials. Starting in Firefox 70, Mozilla aims to have a browser report which will have the list of users whose logins were exposed in data breaches.
New Initiative
Mozilla has collaborated with the Have I Been Pwned data breach tracker to come up with this new initiative. As part of this integration, Firefox will scan the saved login names and passwords to check if they were exposed in data breaches listed on Have I Been Pwned. If Firefox finds any, then it will alert the user and prompt them to change their password. Bleeping Computer reported that this new feature will only work if a user had saved the username and password prior to an associated data breach. For monitoring purposes, Mozilla is slowly integrating its independent Firefox Monitor service and the new Firefox Lockwise password manager.
Working Mechanism
Firefox will scan the saved login names and passwords to see if any of the passwords have been exposed to a data breach listed on Have I Been Pwned website. When a saved login is detected, Mozilla will add an alert icon next to the user’s account profile in the Firefox Lockwise password manager and also ask the user to change their password as soon as possible. On clicking on the saved login, a subpanel will open which will notify the user using an alert that the “Passwords were leaked or stolen” as part of a data breach.
However, this is not the solution to all security breaches. This new feature of Firefox warning when saved logins are found is only applicable for data breaches which exposed passwords and were saved prior to an associated data breach.
Mozilla is also planning on displaying the stats for the number of data breaches the logins were involved in the browser’s upcoming protection report. The reports will be available at the about protections address.
The Road Ahead
While all of this privacy and data security is planned for the Mozilla Firefox 70, it is highly likely that it would not be ready in time, and the features may be subject to change over time.
As part of the new feature, more detailed stats will also be displayed in the future. This will include the extent of the impact of a user’s account, the number of email addresses affected, the number of passwords exposed in an associated breach.
Apart from their plan to integrate these, Mozilla is also thinking about starting new premium services based around these features in the future. So, Mozilla’s new initiative is primarily based on their decision to integrate the Firefox Monitor service and Firefox Lockwise password manager.
Firefox 70 is expected to roll out by the end of October 2019.
