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FireFox as a Security Risk Compared to IE?
A not-so anonymous Anonymous Coward asks: "The administrator at my work gave me the following reason for not using Mozilla. What do you think? 'FireFox is a security risk. Please refrain from using it. Please continue to use IE 6.0. IE is our only supported browser. FireFox saves encrypted pages to disk and does not give you override capability. It also does not allow automatic cache clearing when closing a browser. These are security risks.'" Do any of you have information that could be used to contradict the administrators information on FireFox? Are there configuration options one can reach from about:config that a user can use to address the problem this administrator has cited?
by default, ssl cache is disabled on firefox.
I think I'm going to have to call bullshit on your admistrator.
In about:config, the property you want to look for is:
browser.cache.disk_cache_ssl
From This Page:
* Description: switch to enable caching of objects served over a secure connection (SSL).
* Type: boolean
* Default: false
* Recommendation: true on systems where it is secure to cache these objects.
By default, Firefox (and Mozilla. and Netscape.) will *NOT* cache SSL-served pages. And, contrary to your administrator's *other* claim, you most certainly *can* toggle this behaviour in Firefox.
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
It would be better for a site like that to use a caching proxy anyway. It puts all the effort on the server, and off the desktops, and you have no problem keeping track of what the desktops have stored on them, so if a desktop machine gets stolen, no sensitive info is on it. This has to be applied to other areas of their computing system as well, of course, but it probably already is, because it's really stupid to cache database results.
So, if you use a caching proxy instead of client-side caching, you save bandwidth, you save space, you keep it fast for the users, and you don't have to worry about caching SSL pages on your user's machines.
...these aren't my real teeth.
"The administrator at my work gave me the following reason for not using Mozilla."
Someone's not going to be an anonymous coward for long...
"FireFox is a security risk. Please refrain from using it"
LOL. Very good.
"IE is our only supported browser"
Please don't make me change anything. I might have to test it.
"FireFox saves encrypted pages to disk and does not give you override capability. It also does not allow automatic cache clearing when closing a browser. These are security risks.'"
OMG, people write this stuff?
Internet Explorer runs programs if you put them in an XML stylesheet, it runs programs supplied in bitmap images, allows websites to save scripts to disk and run them from the "trusted" zone, and allows any website to run activeX programs with full access to your computer if you ever click OK to a dialog box. These are security risks.