Browser Security News

It’s long past time to bother telling anyone how much better than IE Firefox is. Faster, smaller, more responsive, with tabbed browsing and useful extensions galore. It’s also lot more secure than IE, partly because it’s open source, and particularly because it’s not integrated with the underlying OS. Firefox’s security bugs involve the browser only, and can be fixed quickly and without much fuss. On the other hand, because of its integration with the OS, IE’s bugs can involve the system overall, and may need weeks or months to sort out.

Indeed, IE6 was estimated to be vulnerable to exploitation for 284 days last year, even among users who patched it religiously, as we reported recently. In contrast, Firefox was estimated to have left users exposed to unpatched flaws for a total of nine days over the same period. Microsoft’s sluggish turnaround with IE’s flaws, due chiefly to the vast complexity of the system of which it is a part, is reason enough to recommend Firefox.

Nevertheless, I’ve long advised security-conscious users to prefer Mozilla to Firefox, in stubborn defiance of the slobbering media infatuation lavished on Firefox. The good news is that recent versions of Firefox are catching up with Mozilla nicely, although there is still some work to be done. Firefox 2.0: happier browsing, but secure? | The Register