Just when you thought it might be safe to surf the web with the latest web browsers (or at least FireFox), hacker J.D. Moore has decided to publish one bug on his blog each day for the month of July - and no, FireFox and Safari aren’t safe either. Of the 9 bugs posted, 7 are in Internet Explorer, 1 in FireFox and 1 in Safari.

The expert reaction to the Month of Browser Bugs is mixed, with some people thinking that making the bugs public can only put pressure on companies to release security patches faster. Others think that going public with this info will only make it easier for hackers to exploit the bugs.

According to Moore’s blog, all these bugs in Internet Explorer were reported to Microsoft in March 2006 and they apparently have yet to be fixed. Each blog entry has a button designed to test the bug, complete with a warning that it may crash your browser. I tried the FireFox one, and sure enough, my browser crashed. The site reports that the bug was fixed in Firefox 1.5.0.3 but I’m using Firefox 1.5.0.4 and it’s still there, unfortunately.

FireFox has marketed itself as a more secure browser than Internet Explorer because it uses alternative technology to ActiveX, which controls how plug-ins interact with webpages and has been known to be easily hacked.

Hopefully, browser companies will be quick to release patches to take care of these security flaws. And for those of you still on Internet Explorer, you may want to consider switching browsers.