Firefox is more secure

[Cleric xtx]

Internet Explorer users spent much more time during 2004 with holes in their security pants, compared to securely-clad Firefox users, web consultancy, ScanIT, reckons.

 

The consultancy says Microsoft's IE was "unsafe" for 98 percent of 2004, while rival browser Mozilla was "unsafe" for only 15 percent of the time.

 

The figures come from ScanIT’s free online Browser Security Checker which, the company says, 195,000 surfers used to check their systems for vulnerabilities during the year.

 

The reports suggest that surfers using Mozilla’s Firefox browser enjoyed the shortest "exposure period", where a patch for known vulnerabilities in the browser was unavailable. By comparison, Internet Explorer users were fully protected for just one measly week in the whole twelve-month period - between 12 and 19 October 2004.

 

"This means fully-patched IE was known to be unsafe for an incredible 98 per cent of 2004," said ScanIT's CEO David Michaux. "And for 200 days in 2004 – that’s some 54 per cent of the time - there was a worm or virus exploiting one of those un-patched vulnerabilities," he added.

 

There were only 56 days in 2004 where there was a publicly-known vulnerability – a remote code execution - in Mozilla’s browser and no patch to fix it, ScanIT said.

 

Users of the Opera browser spent 65 days (17 per cent of the year) with their security pants around their virtual ankles, according to ScanIT’s browser checker figures.

 

"Security researchers seem to be more inclined to report Firefox vulnerabilities to the Mozilla development team than IE flaws to Microsoft because of a better general attitude towards them,reckoned Alla Bezroutchko, ScanIT's Senior Security Engineer. "Mozilla’s Bug Bounty Program, which pays users $500 for reporting critical security bugs, is also a major incentive," he added.

[vexation]

maybe safer, but not as sexy.

lol

[Ziggy]

Think about it like this. If Mozilla didn't think their security was "up-to-par", they wouldn't hand out $500 and a t-shirt to everyone who finds a vulnerability (and maybe a SFX coin, not sure). If Microsoft did this in their products, well, they'd be bankrupt.

 

As for Opera, I would probably use it if it was a bit less screwed up. I mean, they pile more menu items under one menu than I've ever seen in my life. Perhaps if they had a "Opera Lite", it'd gain the attention that Firefox gets. As it is now, I cannot stand to use Opera (for the same reason I can't stand KDE or Konqueror's shell [but I love Konqueror's rendering engine]).

 

And, for the record, this is "publically avaliable updates" -- when a patch is checked in, it's avaliable in the aviary nightly the next day, and someone who is REALLY paranoid can install it if they want.

 

As for the "not as sexy" remark, well, it's debatable. It can look much cooler than IE, but it can also look crappier. The default theme is about as crappy as IE's theme. And most of the themes suck (about the only ones I use are Noia Lite/Extreme, GNOME-Fx, GNOME-Fx Blue, Novell Industrial, and the default theme).

Edited March 28, 2005 by Ziggy