Mozilla's Browsers Suffer Twice The Flaws of I.E.


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Mozilla's Browsers Suffer Twice The Flaws Of Microsoft's IE

http://www.crn.com/sections/breakingnews/d...cleId=170704698

Mozilla's popular Firefox browser has been subjected to nearly double the vulnerabilities of Microsoft's leading Internet Explorer, Symantec said Monday as it released its semi-annual report on the state of Internet security and threats against personal computers.

According to Symantec's Internet Security Threat Report, which used stats from January through June, 2005, Mozilla's browsers suffered from 25 vendor-confirmed bugs in the first six months of the year. Internet Explorer, on the other hand, was pegged with only 13.

Of Mozilla's 25 vulnerabilities, 18, or 72 percent, were tagged as "high severity," up from the 14 most-severe flaws disclosed in the last half of 2004. Meanwhile, IE's total of 13 was fewer than half the 31 made public in the last six months of last year.

"Firefox's vulnerabilities are almost double that of IE," said Oliver Friedrichs, the senior manager of Symantec's security response research team. "[but] when you take a step back, two factors make that less severe."

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The red makes it very difficult to read...

Are we to believe Firefox is twice as insecure as IE? Or perhaps the hackers of the world are trying twice has hard?

Interesting report nonetheless.

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The red makes it very difficult to read...

Are we to believe Firefox is twice as insecure as IE?  Or perhaps the hackers of the world are trying twice has hard?

Interesting report nonetheless.

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Either way, it clearly shows that no browser is secure.

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I think we can all agree on that! Nothing connected to the internet is totally secure. You have to read up and learn how to protect yourself. I have learned so much since I have been coming here (Neowin). Not saying I can't be hacked, but I'm a 1000 times safer then I was in the past.

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I don't trust this information... for several reasons. First off, the report is only available in a webcast (at least as far as I've been able to find) that you are only able to access by registering on Symantics site. This throws off red flags for me immediately, as it's not easy to get the full story to have access to their figures and usage context. Secondly, a quick check of Secunia shows that, yeah, FF has had more advisories (though not as many as are reported in this article), but according to them (whom I trust more than a company that is trying to sell a product based on their figures) FF has 5% of it's vulnerabilities for '05 yet unpatched, vs *45%* for IE. Now, tell me again what was their point? Oh, yeah.. to get you to sign up for their stuff so they can try to sell you software.

I am keenly aware that no software is perfect, but I would choose the vendor that has fastest response time, every time. In this situation, it's much more relevant who closes that exposure gap the fastest.

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It seems that MS don't bother to fix those "not critical" and "less critical" IE vulnerabilities (bad).

But MS does patch "highly critical" and "extremely critical" IE vulnerabilites pretty fast lately:

http://secunia.com/advisories/16480/ 0 day

http://secunia.com/advisories/16373/ 2 days.

http://secunia.com/advisories/15891/ 11 days.

http://secunia.com/advisories/14922/ 0 days.

http://secunia.com/advisories/11165/ 0 day.

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the press thinks Firefox is unsafe

get the facts (source Secunia), Firefox vulnerabilities since 20041109:

grand total: 61 Vulnerabilities

fixed: 56 = 91.8 %

workaround: 2 = 3.3 % ,moderately critical

unfixed: 3 = 4.9 % ,less critical

get the facts (source Secunia), IE vulnerabilities since 20041109:

grand total: 31 Vulnerabilities

fixed: 16 = 51.6 %

workaround: 1 = 3.2 % , moderately critical

workaround: 3 = 9.7 % , not critical

unfixed: 5 = 16.1 % ,moderately critical

unfixed: 2 = 6.5 % ,less critical

unfixed: 4 = 12.9 % ,not critical

Yes, IE has fewer vulnerabilities reported, and of those fewer they patched a lot less.

If we look at the grand total for IE6 the overall picture isn't much better.

Is FF safer than IE ? Draw your own conclusion ....

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Here's a thought...

Who cares? When was the last time your browser was exploited by something Secunia found? Companies like that only exist because they have drilled this "zomg, I have to have a secure computer!!!one11!" idea into our heads.

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