Internet Explorer 8 Trounces Firefox, Chrome in Security Test

[safeguy]

Internet Explorer 8 Trounces Firefox, Chrome in Security Test

Microsoft gets a lot of grief (and deservedly so) for the insecurity of its products. But when it comes to stopping common Web-based attacks against browser users, its Internet Explorer 8 topped the field of major browsers in a security test conducted by NSS Labs.

Within each Web browser are discreet features that guard against malicious activity, such as phishing attacks, pixel-embedded malware, digital certificate inspection, Website reputational analysis and cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks.

In the NSS Labs test with live traffic, Internet Explorer 8 caught 81 percent of the attacks coming over the wire. IE8 vastly outperformed the second closest rival, Firefox 3, which caught 54 percent of the inbound threats. IE8’s performance improved 12 percent over a similar test conducted the previous quarter; NSS Labs credits continual improvements to its SmartScreen technology.

The virgin install of Firefox 3 failed to impress testers, but it did dramatically improve when with Google’s SafeBrowsing, a plug-in that inspects Websites for malicious or fraudulent characteristics.

Google’s ballyhooed browser Chrome (v2) only caught 7 percent of the threats, a drop of 8 percent from the previous test. Safari 4 picked up 21 percent of the threats and Opera 10 beta was the worst performer, detecting just 1 percent of malicious traffic.

When it comes to phishing attacks, Firefox improved its standing against IE8; the two browsers scored a statistical tie (IE8, 83 percent; Firefox 3, 80 percent). Opera 10 dramatically improved its performance from the malicious traffic test by catching 54 percent of phishing attacks. Chrome 2 and Safari 4 rounded out the test field, catching 26 percent and 2 percent of the attacks, respectively.

“Web browsers are in a unique position to combat phishing and other criminal activities by warning potential victims that they are about to stray onto a malicious Website. Since phishing sites have an average lifespan of only 52 hours, it is essential that the site is discovered, validated, classified and added to the reputation system as quickly as possible… The developers at both Microsoft and Mozilla clearly understand this relationship and respond quickly to block new phishing sites,” NSS Labs wrote in its report.

It’s easy to dump on Microsoft for its long history of security vulnerabilities and faulty software. And browser purists will argue the feature virtues and performance of Firefox, Safari and Chrome over Internet Explorer. But the NSS Labs test shows that the superior security performance of Internet Explorer 8 should give users pause in considering a switch to a competing browser.

Source: http://blogs.channelinsider.com/secu...rity_test.html

Seriously IE8 seems to have improved a lot, don't you think so guys? I know most of us are IE haters but come on, we need to applaud Microsoft for what they have done so far.

And one more thing, I am considering Google's SafeBrowsing plug-in (am doing more 'research' about it first)...what about the rest of you Firefox users???

For the rest of you using Google chrome, Opera or Safari, what have you got to say about this?

[shan]

IE not not a bad perfomance but i still think google chroum could have dont better. anyways im always a fire fox

[ceyfer]

Yes, there's a lot of improvements on IE 8, and the SmartScreen technology which is a reputation based technology is simply impressive,and I hope other browser will do incorporate more effective antimalware technology like SmartScreen or better than it.

*IE 6 users : I do recommend everybody to throw IE 6 out of your box or simply look for alternatives.

[safeguy]

Yes, there's a lot of improvements on IE 8, and the SmartScreen technology which is a reputation based technology is simply impressive,and I hope other browser will do incorporate more effective antimalware technology like SmartScreen or better than it.

*IE 6 users : I do recommend everybody to throw IE 6 out of your box or simply look for alternatives.

I agree. I think Firefox needs to incorporate more safety features by default. Most of us are already familiar with add-ons such as AdBlock Plus, NoScript, WOT, etc. It would be great if Firefox adopts or put in some of the features of these add-ons in Firefox itself. This way, those less tech-savvy users still benefit from these added features without having to install the add-ons.

[Toys4Boys]

Can't remember where but I recently read that Mozilla is working on implementing new security features into the next (?) release.

[noaccount]

this is old news... look at the date (article is 2 months old). tests where conducted on July 2009 using FF 3.0.11 - not even 3.5 beta - and without any addons (this is very old story) and the only reference i could find in report Google Safe Browsing were these...

Firefox 3 caught 27% of live threats, far fewer than Internet Explorer 8. It was, however, the best among products utilizing the Google SafeBrowsing API.

Even though Chrome, Firefox and Safari all use the Google Safe Browsing data feed, our testing detected vastly different results in terms of effectiveness in blocking socially engineered malware URLs.

not saying IE8 is not much better than IE6 which is... but this is not a fair comparison.

[safeguy]

Well, it's kinda old news but still the info is valuable.

The point is IE has improved despite how much we hate it. I didn't mean to use this as a reference to compare against browsers (definitely noot trying to start a browser battle here) but rather for us to think about the security level of each browser and how we can further improve it.

P.s. no doubt it's true that Firefox with certain add-ons are definitely more secure than IE. At least for me.

[noaccount]

yeah i see. fair for me would be to compare IE8 limited rights (thats what they used and thats why results are so disparate) with a sandboxed FF with strip-my-rights feature enabled - minimum.