14-year Old Memory Bug In Firefox Finally Fixed

As some software is pretty complicated, sometimes trying to discover bugs within it can be rather difficult. This is also because sometimes in order to trigger the bug, certain actions need to be performed in order to draw it out. In some cases it can even take more than a decade to find a bug, like in the case where Microsoft squashed a 19-year old Windows bug thanks to IBM.

That being said, it looks like Mozilla’s Firefox browser has also been plagued by a bug that has not been addressed for at least 14-years, at least until now where the developers have finally issued a fix for it. This is a memory issue bug and it has affected popular extensions like Adblock Plus, so if you’re an Adblock Plus user, the extension on Firefox should use considerably less memory now than it did before.

According to Mozilla developer Nicholas Nethercote, “With Cameron’s patches applied Firefox with AdBlock Plus used about 90 MiB less physical memory, which is a reduction of over 10%.” The bug was originally reported in April 2001, but for some reason it was only brought up in May 2014 by Mozilla and Adblock Plus. Why it took them that long to address the bug remains a mystery, but we suppose better late than never, right?

Tyler Lee
Categories: Web
Tags: Firefox, Mozilla