130 serious Firefox holes plugged this year

Mozilla has shuttered more than 130 serious vulnerabilities reported by community hackers this year.

The browser-backing outfit announced the statistics in a post covering its bug bounty program and broader information security efforts.

More than 500 million users ran Firefox at the close of 2015. It's since become the world's second-most-used browser.

Google Chrome dominates the browser rankings soaking up 50 percent of all browser usage.

Mozilla security head Richard Barnes says shuttering the serious bugs is critical for the security of the web.

"Hundreds of millions of people use Firefox to connect to the web," Barnes says.

"That’s a huge audience for the user-facing security features and protections we build into Firefox, but at the same time, a single security vulnerability can put all of our users at risk of having their computers or phones taken over by bad actors.

"Without our community of security researchers, every Firefox user would be more at risk."

Barnes says the company works with rivals and other players in the browser ecosystem to help build better encryption and more secure web logins.

He notes Mozilla linked up with Google, Facebook, and Cloudflare to test the latest encryption protocols showing it working across hybrid platforms.

Other efforts include the US$800,000 in funding to majority security-focused open source projects, it's backing of the lauded Let's Encrypt free certificate initiative, and its maintenance of the Mozilla Root Certificate Program.

"Every part of this intricate machine is critical; remove any part, and everyone gets less safe," Barnes says. ®