Firefox version 3.6.2 has been made available ahead of schedule in order to fix a critical security flaw.
The release, made available earlier his week, comes shortly after the German government advised its citizens not to use the Mozilla-developed browser amid security concerns. Earlier in the year, European governments issued a similar warning against the use of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Mozilla had originally planned to fix the identified flaw later this month, but accelerated its launch schedule by making available Firefox 3.6.2 a week earlier than expected.
The critical flaw - one of at least eight security holes fixed in the 3.6.2 release - could have been used to run attacker code or install software on the users' computer, said Mozilla.
The developer "strongly" recommends that "all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release", and users of Firefox 3.6 should automatically be prompted to install the update.
Users who have not yet received the updated can check for the new release manually by choosing "Check for Updates" from the Firefox Help menu.
