Saturday, December 20, 2008

Firefox less secure?

Firefox has often been touted as fundamentally "more secure" than Internet Explorer. If you have been led to believe that, you need to look at some cold, hard facts:
  • From March to September 2005 (yes, even as early as 2005), FireFox had 40 vulnerabilities to IE's 10. [ZDNet article]
  • From April through September 2005, the number of published Firefox exploits was 11 compared to IE's 6.
  • The most recent FireFox-related security problem is that some Russian criminals are using it to add malicious software as a "Plug-In". The malware detects when you connect to any of over 100 banks and then steals your account name and password, sending them to the criminals. [read the SC Magazine article]
  • In terms of vulnerability numbers reported in March 2008, Opera had the most, followed by Safari, FireFox, then Internet Explorer.

The biggest problem with malware is not the browser, it's the person using the browser. People are either too trusting of links and unknown sites or just think they will never get attacked.

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