Mozilla turns off its latest security improvement due to download issues in Firefox 125

Mozilla Foundation recently released Firefox version 125, which went off to a somewhat rough start. Shortly after the initial release, Mozilla pulled version 125.0 due to a "high-severity quality issue," which forced the company to release a bug-fixing update under version 125.0.1. Now, Mozilla pushed another small update to combat another problem. This time, it reverts a security improvement implemented in version 125.0.1.

Firefox 125 introduced some under-the-hood improvements to better block potentially untrustworthy URLs:

Firefox now more proactively blocks downloads from URLs that are considered to be potentially untrustworthy.

Unfortunately, that change introduced problems with downloading files in specific scenarios, which caused Mozilla to temporarily revert the change. Developers promise to fix issues and re-release download protections in future updates:

Reverted the changes recently shipped in Firefox 125 that more proactively blocked downloads from potentially untrustworthy URLs. The changes caused unexpected problems with downloading files in some situations. We plan to fix and re-enable these protections in a future release. (Bug 1892069)

More information about the bug is available on Bugzilla.

In version 125.0.2, Mozilla also acknowledged an odd problem with the browser launching a blank https://0.0.0.1 page when trying to open Firefox while it is already running.

When attempting to launch Firefox while it is already running, an extra blank tab with an address of https://0.0.0.1 may sometimes appear. The cause of this has been identified and will be resolved in an upcoming release.

Other than one change and one known issue, Firefox 125.0.2 does not bring anything new to the table. You can find full release notes on the official website. To download your existing Firefox installation, head to Menu > Help > About Firefox.

Firefox for Windows is available on the official Mozilla website. Alternatively, you can get it from the Microsoft Store using this link.

Source