Mozilla is working on a new security feature that should perhaps be standard in all open browsers. It is a project called Binary Transparency, its objective is to allow third parties to verify that all Firefox binaries are public, that is, they have the same version as the rest of the world and not a special and possibly compromised one.

The binaries of an application are the executable files or the updates produced when the program is built. And since Firefox is an open project, anyone can build their version of the browser using the source code, hence there are so many browsers based on it. Unfortunately not all those versions have good intentions. And Mozilla wants to make sure it provides the tools to avoid malware.

Most users do nothing but download the compiled versions of the browser from the Mozilla website or from another site, and when it is installed we use the same browser to update automatically.

Firefox binaries do not come with any assurance that they correspond to the same source code of that version of Firefox , and although it can be checked by comparing the source code, in reality this is not something that anyone can or can do.

This is where Binary Transparency comes in. The main idea is to add all the Firefox binaries to a public file that anyone can review and compare the local binaries of their Firefox installation to verify that they are the same ones that everybody has and they have not been modified.

In addition to this, Mozilla also plans to integrate the function within the same Firefox updater , so that any update is verified before being downloaded and installed on your system.