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Is The Firefox Honeymoon Over?

Posted by Zonk on from the back-to-reality dept.

prostoalex writes "With Firefox market share reaching a substantial level, is the popular Internet browser becoming a security nightmare for IT administrators? George Ou takes a look at the hard numbers. From the article: 'From March 2005 to September 2005 10 vulnerabilities were published for Microsoft Internet Explorer, 40 for Mozilla Firefox. In April-September timespan there were 6 exploits for MSIE, 11 for Firefox. Conclusion? As you can see, the facade that Firefox is the cure to the Internet Explorer security blues is quickly fading. It just goes to prove that any popular software worth hacking that has security vulnerabilities will eventually have to deal with live working exploits. Firefox mostly managed to stay under the radar from hackers before April of 2005.'"

3 of 560 comments (clear)

  1. Usability. by Puls4r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For me, it's not the number of vulnerabilities and never was. I, like most other people, used IE because it was preinstalled. I was lazy and figured "a browser's a browser". Only once I started using other browsers did I realize:

    1. There is no reason a browser should lock your operating system.
    2. There is no reason a browser should mysteriously slow down your computer.
    3. There is no reason a browser should purposefully make it difficult to change some settings.

    It's like the Messenger service that Microsoft seems DETERMINED to re-enable on my computer every time I update / patch. I know what settings I want, and the browser that lets me use those settings with a minimum of issues is the one I'll use. This isn't loyalty. It's a user-friendly program that doesn't pretend to believe it knows what I want better than I do.

  2. Re: Is the Firefox Honemoon Over? by thc69 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's great that as a sysadmin/programmer using firefox, you've had less problems than with IE.

    More importantly, when I switch my users to Firefox, they cease to have problems. More exploits or not, FF causes fewer headaches. When it's all said and done, I'll choose FF's problems over IE's problems.

    --
    Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
  3. Re: Is the Firefox Honemoon Over? by dmaxwell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'll give you not one but 19.

    http://secunia.com/product/11/

    Watch what you ask for, you just might get it.