Firefox: Honeymoon Over?

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(I didn't write this)We've said before that the primary security advantage Firefox had over Internet Explorer was the fact that it was used by only a fraction of the computer using population. This made it a less attractive target for hackers - why waste your time and effort writing exploits for a program that would only affect a small percentage of users, when your IE exploits would reach so many more? This is called, in the IT security biz, security through obscurity. And contrary to popular belief, it works - for a while. The problem is that obscurity tends not to last. As more and more people have switched to Firefox for its security advantage, its own growing popularity has made it more of a target. Now, according to security expert George Ou, the tipping point has been reached: Firefox now has more vulnerabilities per month than IE. Read George's blog article on this at http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?m=20050916(September 16 entry)

i think that is one of the reasons that Window's has a lot of virus' and hackers, while Macintosh has potentially none ("lets hope it continues" says the macintosh fan)

the browser vs. browser and the OS vs. OS debates remind me of theological debates.People beleive in their system.As much as I hate appearing to support Microsoft and as many complaints I have about Windows and IE, they have honestly caused me few problems. My computers are merely tools and over the years I've learned to follow the path of least resistance to make these tools do what I want and need them to to.

That may be true, but how long does it take Microsoft to fix vulnerabilities in IE? Microsoft is as slow as molasses on a cold day. While it might not look good for Firefox to have so many releases, it actually gets the vulnerabilities and bugs fixed relatively quickly.IE's integration into the OS, and all that Active X stuff, makes IE fundamentally vulnerable. Firefox may not be a panacea, but IE is just awful. I'm not saying I'd fall on my sword for Firefox, but there are other good browsers, for security as well as for functionality. I've been happily using Opera lately.I don't see how someone who uses pretty much anything else could ever go back to IE. It's a weak, elderly application. Microsoft let it go to seed when Netscape lost the market to IE. And it's not that I hate all Microsoft stuff. I use XP, Word, Excel, and Outlook. Their flight simulator program is also very nice. But their Internet browser just sucks. Maybe the next major version will be great. We'll see.

I admitt to some complacency with IE. I have intentions to try firefox and/or oppera. I'm starting to run a bit low on memory and disk space so I'm lothe to download any new apps until I get my ass into gear and do some maintenace here.

Opera runs in a pretty small space. Firefox is a memory hog.

I use mozilla, i dunno how safe this is but I like it better than firefox just because of its simplicity. Also I had a problem with the bookmarks on firefox which caused my screen to bounce when they were put on. So far I havnt even had any spyware in my cookies so it seems to be working well.

Don't Firefox and Netscape use the Mozilla guts? Doesn't that make them all vulnerable?

Didnt really get that. Mozilla guts? When I ment it was better because of simplicity I ment to use. I dunno how simple it is security wise. I would think a good firewall would prevent most hackers anyway. There are plenty of people out there with no security at all. If I was a hacker I would go for the easy targets first rather than wasting time hacking through security and such.

I heard that oppera was free now, not just the freeby anniversary gift.is this true?

IE7 should be in testing now. If I still had my MSDN subscription I could probably be using it right now. Unfortunately, I can't afford to spend $3000 on software each year (although it can be purchased for a few hundred cheaper).From what I've heard it will be much improved, although that also means everyone is going to accuse them of copying Firefox and the other browers, for their multi-tabbed browsing, etc.

From what I've heard it will be much improved...I don't care who they copy. If it's stable and has useful features, I'll be happy. One problem I have with the current IE is that its rendering engine arbitrarily deviates from the standards, so that a properly implemented browser will sometimes have trouble with Web sites that depend on IE's weirdness. That kind of arrogance is not cool. I don't see Microsoft fixing that, and suddenly breaking a lot of Web sites.They're also stuck with the fact that IE's tight integration into the OS makes the OS more vulnerable to attack.Microsoft always pulls that kind of nonsense, where they design things that are supposed to conform to a standard, then subtly break the standard, and hope that their broken "standard" takes over the market and pushes out everyone else. Remember what they tried to do to Java, before Sun Microsystems took them to court and got them to stop? That predatory behavior is one reason that people hate MS. It's not just that they're big and successful. It's that they're arrogant and predatory.