Slashdot Mirror
Is The Firefox Honeymoon Over?
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.'"
There is one significant difference. I'm a knowledgable user. I program and sys-admin. I practice good security. Regardless of the number of exploits out there, I've never been hit by a FF exploit. I have been hit by IE exploits.
But the submitter is right. Though code security is important, the number of users is also a huge factor.
Cue someone to mention Apache.
Yes, Apache is everywhere, exploit-free. So are lots and lots of other binaries. It's only when you compare Apache to IIS 4/5 that it's really such a perfect example. Compare it to WinAMP, or Bash, or Finder, and its no more, no less secure.
Implicit Evaluation with PHP
Well, this is a good example of bad journalism. I don't want to get into a flame ware about which browser is more secure (although I have an obvious bias). What I'm try to say is that this guy is quoting useless statistics and this is a great example of bad science/tech reporting in the media.
1) The number of vulnerabilities reported has almost nothing to do with the number in the code. At most it dictates a minimum number that exist. Perhaps the firefox community is much more active at searching for bugs in the much newer firefox code.
3) How effective are the fixes? MS seems to have the same recurring problems because they only do triage. They don't fix the bigger problem (VERY poor browser design). The firefox team appears to address the bigger problem, not just stop the current bleeding.
2) How critical are these vulnerabilities. The article makes no mention of any ranking. He lumps everything into the same category. MANY of the IE bugs over the last 5 years have been SUPER critical, allowing remote access with little or no user intervention and no settings work around. Are the fire fox bugs the same?
3) Different organizations handle the vulnerabilities: MS and the Mozilla Foundation. MS is known to sit on bugs as long as possible. Perhaps the Firefox team is just being more responsive to the people looking for them.
Remember 99% of people that have cancer have eaten pickles. That doesn't tell you squat about the relationship of pickles and cancer.
IAAITG (I am a IT guy)
Spell check? Why bother. That is what grammer/spelling Nazi freaks who waiste band width posting "spell right" are for.
As well, how many of these vulnerabilities/exploits were "critical" and how severely did they expose your computer to running unauthorized code vs. the MS ones? How much effort did it take to repair them? The last vulnerability I recall patching required making a minor change to my Firefox config by hand rather than patching or upgrading.
Because IE is so tied in not only to the OS, but to various Visual Studio API's, were Microsoft's vulnerabilities more far-reaching?
I'm no MS apologist, but I'm also not a Linux or OSS zealot. I like to use what works best for my needs and habits, which ends up being a mix of Closed Source and Open Source products. I don't want to be biased on one side or another, but I'd like to be sure that comparisons like this are apples to apples.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I use it because its a better browser. It has more (and better) features than the competition. THAT is why I use it and recommend it to those who ask, not because of its security track record.
Another in a series of stories that seem to be written to raise the ire of /.'ers. You're smarter than this, fellow reader. Do not give in to the temptation to flame on. We all know better.
Sad that the writer didn't.
A clever person solves a problem, A wise person avoids it. -Einstein
Here's the difference.
If the Firefox web browser sucks, the average Joe can uninstall that web browser from a Windows box....
if IE sucks...
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
1. How many Critical IE vs Firefox
2. How fast where patches/new versions deployed
3. How many days was the browser open to the exploit
And Finally
4. Total number of days browser was exploitable - IE vs Firefox
I bet you will find issues in IE that are not even patched yet, turnaround for more Firefox issues however? In most cases a solution within hours a patch within days.
Personal Website
Yes, the honeymoon is over, and now the more enjoyable adventure of building a life together begins.
"I'm not impatient. I just hate waiting." - My Dad
It's still more secure than IE.
You make a powerful argument. I'm daunted at the prospect of countering it. I think I'll back down in the face of your intellectual prowess.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
They should have separated vulnerabilities into classes then also taken into account the average time between discovery and fix and ease of patching. Anyone one of such a study?
What I'm try to say is that this guy is quoting useless statistics and this is a great example of bad science/tech reporting in the media.
0 219783
AMEN! Your pickles example is a good reminder of the confusion many Americans have over causality vs. correlation.
Damned Lies and Statistics by Joel Best is an excellent primer in the dangers of poorly used and cited statistics. It's a must read:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/052
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.
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.
This is exactly true. I administer over 2,000 machines (mixed platform environment). We started installing Firefox as part our standard package over a year ago. There has never been one report of a problem with security involving Mozilla Firefox. There have, in the same time period, been numerous security problems originating in the Microsoft Internet Explorer web browser. It doesn't matter how many exploits get published if they aren't being exploited or their exploit does not result in any significant harm. As posters below have noted, this article is a result of bad journalism.
"I set MSN Search as my default search engine on Firefox"
I set my Firefox home page to open MSN search with the default search strings "openoffice.org google 'how do I replace microsoft windows with linux?'".
It's the little things that make life enjoyable.
What I find most fascinating is that no one seems willing to recognize that the more users you have, the greater the interest in hacking becomes. If you have a paltry penetration for your technology, hackers ignore you.
Now, is Firefox more secure? In theory it should be. Are the exploits in Firefox less problematic? Well, until hackers care to exploit it, who the heck really knows? I remember when Firefox pop-up blocking worked. Now, there are known methods to circumvent the technology...go figure...the folks who care have found new methods because Firefox was eating their lunch.
Now, I heard someone say that Apache is a model...what about all those worms that have been attacking, and defeating, Apache for the last 3 years (slapper, scalper, etc.)? Apache's only grace is that the developers move FAST when a new exploit is found. However, most attacks are not day zero attacks, which means that the vast majority of attacks are based on known, patched or patchable flaws.
So, it is incumbent on any admin to keep their systems up-to-date AND recognize that patch management is one of the key hallmarks of a secure system.
What does this mean for Firefox? Same patch management must be implemented for Firefox as should be in place for Exploder. Moreover, perimeter firewalls and intrusion detection systems must be in place and up-to-date themselves. And even with this diligence, per the CSI FBI Computer Crime & Security Survey 2005, 95% of Enterprises experienced system penetration and 55% were attacked by worms or viri.
Guess what? Software development methodology is not a panacea anymore than anything else.
Diligence, not arrogance, will protect your computing assets.
"... but you can love completely without complete understanding." - Norman Maclean, "A River Runs Through It"
Also.. the most important factor. The Firefox community fixes the problems.
There are flaws in IE that have been known for better than 6-8 months and still there is no fix.
Digital is, by definition, imperfect. Analog is the way to go.
I don't really believe in this, but arguing like that is arguing against Firefox.
My personal opinion on these things is: People care way too much about browser religion. Let people use IE, not that much wrong with it. Both IE and Firefox are huge complex applications processing huge amounts of diverse untrusted data. Sure it'd be great if they were secure, but it is just not happening that way yet.
There might be some hope on the horizon with low-rights IE7. It might be that it really does manage to remove the impact of the bugs, which is really the best case scenario as things stand. If so we will no doubt see similar approaches integrated in Linux desktops and see Firefox refactored to use the same approach.
Losing my mod points to say this but...
Really; are you in imminent danger of being modded down on Slashdot because you posted something negative about Microsoft and positive about Firefox?
Are you also worried about being flamed because you compress your music with ogg?
Do you live in fear of being outed to the slashdot community for creating documents in Open Office?
You're such a rebel.
[smile]
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
I really want to give Firefox to all my users, but there's no good way of managing the updates for my users. Until the Firefox comes packaged as an MSI so that I can force an upgrade via Group Policy, I won't install it on my users machines. And when they do make an MSI for it, how am I to keep people up-to-date with extensions? The Grease Monkey extension had a vulnerability awhile back, and I don't see a way for Firefox to allow me to force an upgrade to everyone for extensions. IE works well because I can release patches for it via WSUS. And since SP2 for XP, we've had less calls about spy/adware installs.
It just goes to prove that any popular software worth hacking that has security vulnerabilities will eventually have to deal with live working exploits.
What can I say? I pity the administrator that need "proof" to realize this.
Straight to the "Security 101" class you go, as you should have before getting a job.
Or if not having one, thank god for that.
As you can see, the facade that Firefox is the cure to the Internet Explorer security blues is quickly fading.
Here's the hard facts according to Secunia...
IE 6: 19 of 85 unpatched issues, the most severe classed Highly Critical.
Firefox 1.x: 3 of 22 unpatched issues, the most severe classed Less Critical.
Opera 8.x: 0 of 7 unpatched issues.
I don't know about you, but as long as a product is auto-updating (which the Firefox 1.5 beta and onwards indeed is, like IE 6, and unlike Opera 8), what does it matter how many exploits are found? Isn't it how many issues you're affected by that matters?
Yes, this was a problem with Firefox before 1.5 as you can't excuse having to manually upgrade your browser while monitoring security sites (at least not from the audience Firefox is targeting), and that's why I recommend people to upgrade to 1.5 ASAP. The minor instabilities still present from being in beta isn't as bad as missing out security fixes.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
security defects aside, i've had firefox crash on me at least twice a DAY in the last year or so.
annoying as it may be, it's still less annoying than the alternative
Let's go through your objections point by point
If this is so it just leads to the question: Why should people use Firefox now then? Lets wait until 2010 when it will actually be better and stick to IE which is better now.
Except then Firefox will not get developed to as high a level as IE has and will never reach that point. Note that this observer has the same problem as most observers who say, "It's better!" And that problem is that the numbers aren't exactly fairly proportioned. An IE hack that gives someone access to all your 'net data then wipes your entire hard drive is counted as one bug, as is a firefox flaw that gives someone access to your last ten sites viewed. That's a biased and unfounded example, but the reality stands regardless - THIS IS NOT A GOOD WAY TO DO A SECURITY STUDY.
I don't really believe in this, but arguing like that is arguing against Firefox.
It is arguing against the further development of Firefox, too. No users, no development.
My personal opinion on these things is: People care way too much about browser religion. Let people use IE, not that much wrong with it.
There's piles of things wrong with IE, they're just not user-visible all the time and that is a main portion of the problem's gestalt.
Both IE and Firefox are huge complex applications processing huge amounts of diverse untrusted data. Sure it'd be great if they were secure, but it is just not happening that way yet.
You can lock Firefox down if you want. Won't be able to see EVERYTHING, but it will definitely be secure. Not quite anywhere near as true with IE.
There might be some hope on the horizon with low-rights IE7. It might be that it really does manage to remove the impact of the bugs, which is really the best case scenario as things stand.
You can do this in linux. Natively. Just make yourself a different user with no rights to do certain things. Try that in Windows and see if it works for you. As to the, "Microsoft will solve everything in the end" mentality, well, I can't really argue with that.
If so we will no doubt see similar approaches integrated in Linux desktops and see Firefox refactored to use the same approach.
You're looking at it the wrong way. Microsoft is behind and has been so for a very long time. The stuff you want is part of the problem with their occasional 'buy instead of implement' business model.
My little site.
"Fundamental" as in "never heard of by anyone else"?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
So they found more exploits to FF. FF is also newer. Does this mention the hundreds of IE exploits in the back catalog? Does this mention some of the fatal flaws that MS has not repaired since IE 5? I know because I have had to hack fixes for web apps in IE... never had to do it for Firefox. Read through MSDN and count all the bugs, then read through Bugzilla.
Any new product will have more flaws found per month than an existing product. This is common sense. The difference with FF is the turn around of the fixes. You could imply as much from the article. 40 down to 11. Notice how IE6 has the same amount still found (10 and 6 are alot closer than 40 and 11), and it is a product that has been on the market how long( 4 years)?
There is no news here, just FUD and a normal software lifecycle. This is perfectly normal.
You need only to look at secunia.com's summaries to see through the idiocy of this article:
vs.
Firefox: 0% Extremely Critical
IE: 14% Extremley Critical
Need we say more?
There are flaws in IE that have been known for better than 6-8 months and still there is no fix.
Ok, sure... I'll bite. I don't buy it. Name ONE risky security flaw that has been known for 6 months without being patched by Microsoft.
"the facade that Firefox is the cure to the Internet Explorer security blues [...]"
It's not a product specific issue. Diversity is the cure to monoculture security blues. The more mainstream a product becomes, the more malicious users will target it. And if it's the only game in town it might as well have a big bullseye pinned on it.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane. -Oscar Wilde
I'll give you not one but 19.
http://secunia.com/product/11/
Watch what you ask for, you just might get it.
ActiveX?
Read my blog.
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.
exactly. and really, at the end of the day it's not just number of the exploits, is it? maybe firefox has 44 exploits, all of which are easily implemented by a supreme diety who speaks assembler like a native speakers, and which, once done, make the browser a little slower or the graphics render funny.
whereas there may be only 6 exploits for IE, but my dog can (and does) routinely use them, and every single one of the roots the box the browser's running on.
this is clearly exagerated a bit, but the simple *number* of exploits isn't too relevent
Only ten?? Guess it depends on where Internet Explorer ends and where the "operating system" begins. Many of the worst bugs haven't "officially" been MSIE bugs, but the result is that a malicious web page can take control of your system or do other things you'd never imagine it ought to be able to.
I did a quick search of the microsoft bulletins and found 13. And these aren't even exactly the same ones Secunia lists (two of which they say Microsoft hasn't even fixed).
And why from March? Look at what an ugly month February was for MSIE.
MS05-038 - aug 17
JPEG Image Rendering Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1988
Web Folder Behaviors Cross-Domain Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1989
COM Object Instantiation Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1990
MS05-037 - jul 12
JView Profiler Vulnerability - CAN-2005-2087
MS05-032 - jun 14
Microsoft Agent Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1214
MS05-028 - jun 14
Web Client Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1207
MS05-026 - jun 14
HTML Help Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1208
MS05-025 - jun 14
PNG Image Rendering Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1211
XML Redirect Information Disclosure Vulnerability - CAN-2002-0648
MS05-024 - may 10
Web View Script Injection Vulnerability - CAN-2005-1191
MS05-020 - april 12
DHTML Object Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0553
URL Parsing Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0554
Content Advisor Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0555
MS05-015 - feb 8
Hyperlink Object Library Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0057
MS05-014 - feb 8
Drag-and-Drop Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0053
URL Decoding Zone Spoofing Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0054
DHTML Method Heap Memory Corruption Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0055
Channel Definition Format (CDF) Cross Domain Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0056
MS05-013 - feb 8
DHTML Editing Component ActiveX Control Cross Domain Vulnerability - CAN-2004-1319
MS05-009 - feb 8
(PNG buffer overflow, may not affect IE, remote code execution in MSN, WMP, etc)
MS05-008 - feb 8
Drag-and-Drop Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0053 (yes, exploitable via web page)
MS05-006 - feb 8
Cross-site Scripting and Spoofing Vulnerability - CAN-2005-0049
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
As for IE7, I haven't seen any features promised that Firefox doesn't already have. And I think Firefox is still more standards-compliant, which is a pretty big deal to me. Also, Microsoft's general attitude toward their web services has been contrary to the spirit of common standards with multiple implementations, and has almost always been some kind of maneuver to force a lock-in. They thought they had that with IE 4.0, which explains why they didn't really take the broswer any further until maybe now.
This presents a kind of moral argument for using Firefox over IE. It sounds ridiculous on the surface, and it would be in any kind of sane universe. But we have Microsoft.
Right, I don't really buy this study either. I were just stating that if one says that Firefox is worse now one can't argue that people should switch. Also, sure, if people switch over in masses the development effort will go faster, but this was not really about what was best for Firefox, but what is best for the user now.
Best for the user right now is probably Opera - noone is willing to pay for a browser so there aren't really that many people willing to mess around with writing viruses and crap for it. As to whether Firefox or IE is better, well... Hard to say. I'd have to sift through exactly what the holes found in Firefox were, but last time I read up in any detail on the security holes found in an Open Source project, I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were all holes in tertiary stuff... Linux server software (and this is not necessarily true of Firefox, I'm really going way out on a limb here, and it will take backup from someone who keeps completely on top of this to really help me out... hint hint...) has bugs and problems and security patches, yes, but they're for a minor exploit that crashes or allows someone in through highly obscure software. Microsoft, since it's all one big piece, ends up handing you the keys to the castle. Therefore, one Microsoft bug can be seen as an unequivocal disaster and twenty Linux bugs can be seen as a biteme.
This is one that shows up over and over, that IE's basic design is flawed. Which is, as far as I can tell, unfounded. All the external interfaces and architecture seems clean and nice enough, and since I (and I would guess; you) have no way to look at the source I can't say that we have any reason to believe that the IE source is in a bad state.
This is where I do have proof. All those security patches for IE? Yeah, design flaw. It's not an arms race to fight off the hackers at the gate because you wrote effective, stable software. It's an arms race to fight off the hackers at the gate because you wanted to lock Netscape and friends out of the browser industry by making ActiveX mildly attractive and highly proprietary / dangerous to work in due to its features which were promised but under-tested. Or badly designed. Take your pick.
This is not a process-level permission thing (which would wreck the way the application works, you need to be able to save files, change settings and so on for it to be a sane desktop application). Rather Microsoft is finally getting around leveraging and extending the rather advanced and fine-grained NT security model for something. The basic idea is that most of the application runs with very restricted permissions and can launch subcomponents like a download or settings panel that have a higher level of permission. This is set on a very fine-grained level. There is no need to have separate components, nor is it all-or-nothing, a component can have access to specific system calls according with specific parameters, they may change only some given parts of the registry and so on.
You mean like Unix? What an innovation!
This I call bullshit,
Microsoft has been behind in security design for over a decade. I was working in Unix, which is capable of doing the things you're calling revolutionary, when I was in junior high a full uhm.... Longer than I want to think about... ago. Everything is a file and files have - while not a perfect permissions system - at least something which is designed for multi-user and therefore easily modifiable to multi-permission. Call BS all you want, but M$ has a lot of spaghetti code in your computer....
I'm trying not to be biased here, but I obviously am very much so.
My little site.
Thats a true-er representation of security.
Mozilla usually patch flaws fairly quickly - there's flaws in IE that have been known for *years* before they were patched, if at all.
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.