Firefox 132 released, features privacy improvements

Mozilla is releasing Firefox 132 for everyone who is running the browser in the stable channel. At the same time, new builds have received two supported ESR branches, 115.17.0 and 128.4.0. Firefox 133 is now in the Beta channel, and is scheduled for release on November 26.

Speaking about Firefox 133, which is in now beta: It adds the ability to view tabs from other devices via the menu in the upper-right corner. Linux builds now support additional touchpad gestures (such as tapping with two fingers to pause inert scrolling). On Android, desktop mode is enabled by default on devices with larger screens.

What's new in Firefox 132

Enhanced Tracking Protection  improvements

In the strict mode of Enhanced Tracking Protection and when opening pages in private browsing mode, Firefox now blocks access to all third-party cookies set when accessing domains different from the domain of the current page. For example, if previously third-party code from site "C", embedded via iframe on sites "A" and "B", could process cookies common to these sites, then from now on cookies set by site "C" will be unavailable when loading code from sites "A" and "B" with the site "C" embedded on them. Such cookies are widely used for user tracking.

Copy Link Without Site Tracking

Firefox will disable the "Copy Link Without Site Tracking" context menu item if the selected link does not contain tracking parameters. Also, it can now remove more trackers, including parameters used on LinkedIn and Shopee.

Favicon processing

The logic of processing favicon icons when automatically replacing the HTTP protocol with HTTPS has been changed. Firefox will no longer load icons for sites where the icon is only available via HTTP.

TLS 1.3 improvements

• TLS 1.3 adds support for the quantum-resistant hybrid key exchange algorithm "mlkem768x25519", which is a combination of X25519 ECDH and the ML-KEM (CRYSTALS-Kyber) algorithm recently standardized by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). ML-KEM uses lattice-theoretical cryptography that can be solved in the same amount of time on conventional and quantum computers.
• Implemented support for the TLS extension for compressing certificates at the connection negotiation stage ( RFC 8879 ), which allows for faster connection setup since the transfer of certificate data accounts for the lion's share of traffic at the connection negotiation stage.

DRM

A module has been implemented for the EME (Encrypted Media Extensions) API with support for Microsoft's PlayReady copy protection technology , providing DRM (Digital Rights Management) elements for viewing encrypted video content in 1080p and 4K Ultra HD quality on PlayReady-enabled streaming platforms. The ability to use PlayReady is initially enabled for a small percentage of users, but the user base will gradually increase in the future.

WebRender

The WebRender API for the SVG filters eBlend, feColorMatrix, feComponentTransfer, feComposite, feDropShadow, feFlood, feGaussianBlur, feMerge, and feOffset now includes hardware-accelerated rendering, improving performance when working with certain types of graphical content.

Other changes

• For Windows and macOS platforms, support for the Wide-gamut color space has been implemented , which is currently limited to P3 profiles with 8-bit color representation per channel.
• The macOS builds have expanded session recovery tools (Firefox now automatically launches if a session is interrupted due to a system restart) and added the ability to share the screen.
• In the Android version , the address bar has been moved to the top of the screen by default in new installations. You can use the "Customize > Toolbar" setting to move the address bar down.
  • The "viewport" meta tag's " interactive-widget " parameter is now set to "resizes-visual" by default, which causes the appearance of the on-screen keyboard to change the size of the visible area (visual viewport), but does not change the size of the rendering area (layout viewport), which avoids resource-intensive content redrawing.

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In addition to new features and bug fixes, Firefox 132 fixes 17 vulnerabilities. Two vulnerabilities are marked as dangerous, but another 7 vulnerabilities, collected under CVE-2024-10467, are caused by memory issues such as buffer overflows and access to already released memory areas. These issues can potentially lead to the execution of attacker code when opening specially designed pages.

Download Firefox

Alternatively, you can download the installers here: https://releases.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/132.0/. Choose the browser compatible with your OS, language, and platform from there. The files are sorted into subdirectories by platform and UI language, and they include complete (offline) installer packages.

Linux users should use the OS' package manager to get the latest version available for the distro. E.g. in Ubuntu/Mint with the official mozillateam PPA connected, you can run the apt update && apt install firefox command in a root terminal.

The official release notes are here: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/132.0/releasenotes/.