UK Gov't Says "No Evidence" IE Is Less Secure

aliebrah writes "Lord Avebury tabled a parliamentary question in the UK regarding the security of Internet Explorer and whether the UK government would reconsider its use. He got an answer from the UK Home Office that's unlikely to please most Slashdot readers. The UK government contends that 'there is no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer to other browsers will make users more secure.'"

Comments

Probably true, even.

[toQDuj]

That's very likely true, as the stupidity of the user remains the weakest factor in security.

Re:Probably true, even.

[BikeHelmet]

But the trend of users getting infected seems to indicate IE is worse. User stupidity hurts, but so do unpatched remote code execution flaws.

Microsoft likes to tout how insecure other browsers and OS's are because they receive more security updates, but I'm not convinced. It's a poor measurement of security.

There's no way to know how many landmine exploits are in IE. I consider Firefox more secure, because as its market share goes up, the number of ITW exploits doesn't seem to be exploding.

Re:Probably true, even.

[Daengbo]

I might actually believe that a fully patched IE8 is on par with other browsers, but the UK gov't will undoubtedly take the Home Office's decision to mean that IE6 is OK, too. That's scary.

Re:Probably true, even.

[Geirzinho]

Users are the weakest link in the security chain. And the least trained users are normally those on the de facto standard of Windows with IE, which implies a higher infection rate on thos systems.

If we substitute eg. Firefox for IE as the default browser in Windows, unskilled users will still remain unskilled users. They will still follow any shady link they come over, some of which will undoubtedly manage to poke a hole in FF's security.

The challenge and solution to security in the current environment is to educate the "average person."

Re:Probably true, even.

[palegray.net]

The fundamental issue here actually is "security through obscurity," although not in the context that you use it (instead, referring to the traditional context). With closed source software, you're at the mercy of the manufacturer when it comes to even getting an acknowledgment of security issues, let alone receiving fixes in a timely fashion or before damage is already done. Microsoft has a terrible track record in this department; more times than I can count I've become aware of a security issue they were alerted to weeks or months late.

With Firefox, there is generally a very high degree of transparency when it comes to security problems. Additionally, fixes are pushed out quickly. Although Firefox continues to gain market share, the actual damage caused by exploits continues to remain quite low. That's certainly not the case with IE, and as long as it's closed source that won't change.

Re:Probably true, even.

[Geirzinho]

Let's assume for a second we've educated each and every single user and made them security conscious on the Internet. An educated user browses a site which contains an image that is constructed to exploit a security flaw in the browser without the user ever doing anything but viewing the image. Unknowingly the user's browser is compromised and in the hands of the attackers despite the fact that the user is well educated and security conscious, which means education alone is not the solution. Better software is the solution.

Absolutely. But what we stated was that, as of right now, users are the weakest link in the security chain. By educating users, you strengthen that link and make another link the weakest. Even so, you have by training improved the security of the system.

To get exploited in your scenario, assuming the user now sticks to "honest" sites and doesn't follow all email links) would require something like a web server exploit such a XSS. This is more difficult than simply tricking the user into executing a trojan.

Normally to safely cross the street you only need to look left and right to check for traffic, you don't have to look up for falling objects, you don't have to check the road for mines, tripwires or other booby traps, you don't have to check for sniper fire

We should not ignore software security just because the user is the weakest link. But to borrow your analogy: the problem today is that pedestrians don't look left and right before crossing the street. Training them to do this would save more lives than any piano transportation safety regulation.

Re:Probably true, even.

[hedwards]

Well, there's a couple things going on there. Other vendors actually patch flaws rather than just adding them to the errata because they didn't feel like fixing them. Sure they don't fix all of them, but things which aren't fixed are far less likely to come back and bite the user or require changes to the code base which aren't reasonable on the current revision. But they do get fixed or some how addressed in future versions.

The other thing is that other vendors actually acknowledge when there's a vulnerability which they can't patch post haste which makes it seem like they've got more bugs since they don't have a secret list of unpatched vulnerabilities. Nor do many of them have the option of dong so. Sunshine is the best disinfectant after all.

*No* evidence?

[henrypijames]

It's one thing to say there is insufficient evidence, but *no* evidence?!

There IS no evidence!

[guyminuslife]

The latest patched version of Internet Explorer fixed the bugs that Microsoft found. The latest patched version of other browsers fixed the bugs that other browser-manufacturers found. Ergo, there is no evidence that the latest patched version of Internet Explorer are less secure, since the officially "known" security features have been fixed.

In fact, there's no evidence that there are any bugs at all in the latest patched versions of any software ever written, unless the manufacturers have explicitly stated that there are. In which case, in order for policymakers to accept such a report, they would need to prove that this is the case, by lobbying the government to the effect that their software is inferior.

"Not please" Slashdot readers?

[Jane Q. Public]

I don't know why it would "not please" Slashdot readers. I am very pleased. That is the funniest thing I've read all week.

Nothing like a good laugh to start your morning.

Re:Bullshit

[Runaway1956]

You get your IT news from the register? Coool!

More seriously - you link to that page, with words that seem to indicate there are a LOT of Firefox exploits in the wild. Care to name some? The IRC exploit only counts as one.

One more time, I'll point up Firefox's main advantage over IE: Vulnerabilities are made public, and people actually address the vulnerabilities as quickly as possible. Firefox exploits aren't hidden under a mountain of shit by some corporate boss, so that he hopes they can go away.

IMHO, Firefox is just about as safe as a browser can be, today, based on current knowledge. It ranks right up there with Chrome and Opera, and Safari, and Konqueror.

IMHO, Internet Explorer MIGHT be almost as secure - if and when people finally upgrade from IE6 to at least 7, and preferably 8. MIGHT BE. You'll notice that MS didn't publicize this newest vulnerability, until Google and others had already done so.

Re:This is why...

[malkavian]

Probably because they are.
By "insufficient evidence" they usually mean "we've not heard enough to convince us". Which means "Someone was telling us stuff, but we don't really understand the field that they were trying to explain about. Instead of trying to understand the stuff we don't understand, we prefer to play nice with the money, because that tells us it's all good.".
The prime qualifications in Labour are history, classics, and a few Lawyers, advertising and marketing. Not really anyone with any solid scientific skills.
So, rather than work out the hard stuff, and make scientific dispassionate decisions which will make the country stronger and genuinely safer, they prefer to use rhetoric and assume that things work by fiat (we say the world works that way, ergo it does, because we say, which is why it lost pretty much the core of its drugs advisory group because the scientific advice of some highly qualified and internationally renowned people was completely ignored, and the opposite decision was made as policy, AND the politician hounded the scientist for not backing him up and twisting scientific results to fit into what he wanted things to be like).
I don't trust 'em as far as I can spit 'em. They need to understand scientific method, not empty rhetoric.

Missing the point

[sparky81]

"The reason for this statement by the UK government is very simple - it has intranet and business systems in virtually every government department which work only with IE. They frequently ridiculously old versions at that - IE6 take a bow - giving the lie to the "latest, fully patched" comment anyway. There is no way that the UK government is going to incur the conversion costs for these systems at this moment given the state of its books at the moment. Stating that IE was insecure would create an inexorable pressure to do exactly that. This statement has nothing to with security, and everything to do with internal government politics.

Re:Missing the point

[M-RES]

I was going to mention this very issue and you beat me to it. I know people who work in local government, both as 'users' of the in-house systems and 'sysadmins' on those same systems, and they all tell me how outdated their setups are. They're by and large using IE6 across the board, because the browser-based apps they use work in IE6 and if there's the slightest glitch in updating the browser they won't touch it - they just don't have the budget to deal with the issue and test it rolled out across such huge networks.

If it doesn't work someone would have to take the blame and we all know how civil servants do everything they can to avoid having any responsibility whatsoever for any decisions, hence the 'committee'. The committee provides plausible deniability wherein any single member can say "I didn't agree with the decision, but the committee decided...".

Welcome to the cosy sheltered world of civil service. People who work there genuinely couldn't survive in the 'real world' of private business/industry!

Re:Bullshit

[icebraining]

That's NOT a Firefox exploit. That's Firefox send a normal HTTP request to a non-standard port (6667), and the IRC server *wrongly* interprets it as IRC protocol.

The only thing they say Firefox does "wrong" is actually connecting to a non-standard port, which I dispute: there are plenty of reasons to run webservers in non-standard ports, and I want to be able to connect to them.

Re:Lord Avebury.....

[jimicus]

It was the Home Office that gave the reply some people don't like, even if it is probably true.

Only on a technicality.

Technically, at this moment in time there are precisely no publicly known exploits for a fully patched up to date copy of IE, a fully patched up to date copy of Firefox or a fully patched up to date copy of Opera.

The fact that history has shown us that exploits for IE tend to show up more frequently, are often nastier than exploits for Firefox or Opera and are almost never dealt with in an out-of-cycle patch (and so will be exploitable for that much longer) is neither here nor there. This is absolutely typical of any UK government department (and probably the same in many Western countries) - when you're asked a question which you don't necessarily like, interpret it in a fashion which allows you to give an answer which you do like.

Admitting that IE may be more dangerous isn't in and of itself a huge problem but it may well invite a lot more questions like "How many internal government systems only work with IE?" - and I bet you anything you like the answer is not "Zero".

IE or "the latest fully patched versions" of IE?

[jc42]

What I notice is that the headline and most of the discussion here talk about the security of "IE", while the Home Office said "the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer". There seems to be little understanding that these aren't synonyms.

But does anyone here work for an organization of any sort (government, industry, academia, whatever) that requires that everyone use "the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer"?

In all the cases that I know of, when there's such standardization, it's for releases that existed shortly before the standard was established. It's now years later, and the standard is still in place (though often violated by workers who want better security or more features).

A number of people have written about organizations that are still standardized on IE6 and don't permit upgrades to IE8. Is there any data available on how widespread this might be? In my experience, such data is hard to come by, since both governments and private corporations tend to be secretive about their inner workings.

So could the Home Office be pushing for upgrades to W7+IE8? Nah; I thought not.

Well excuse me. but i trust germans over brits in

[unity100]

matters like these. with their paranoid attention to detail, psychopathic inclination to procedure, and ungodly patience with working on intricate technical details, any word from germans in that area would trample any word from britain at any point for me.

the fact that u.k. government has been shitting and screwing up in every other field for the last 10 years does not help either.

So security through wishful thinking is better?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

With closed source software, you're at the mercy of the manufacturer when it comes to even getting an acknowledgment of security issues, let alone receiving fixes in a timely fashion or before damage is already done.

This argument endlessly amuses me. Do you really think the exact same thing is not true of OSS-based browsers such as Firefox and Chrome?

Hint #1: If you have not personally evaluated the source code of the browser you are using, nor employed a skilled specialist to do so for you, then you are just as dependent on other parties over whom you have no direct control to identify and patch security issues before the bad guys exploit them. The theoretical possibility that you can examine the source code is just security theatre unless you actually spend the time and resources to do it.

Hint #2: Which OSS browser do you think has a public bug database listing all known vulnerabilities, whether or not they have yet been patched, and keeps that database updated immediately every time a new vulnerability is reported?

With Firefox, there is generally a very high degree of transparency when it comes to security problems.

Unless you are one of the select few with access to the full security issue process, you don't know that.

Additionally, fixes are pushed out quickly.

Or that.

Although Firefox continues to gain market share, the actual damage caused by exploits continues to remain quite low. That's certainly not the case with IE, and as long as it's closed source that won't change.

Or any of that.

If you really don't see the blind spot you're exhibiting here, try answering these simple questions (and be honest with yourself):

• When you bashed IE above, how many exploited vulnerabilities in the latest version of IE did you actually know about?
• How many confirmed cases could you name where damage had been caused as a result of one of the exploits you just listed (if there were any)?
• Did you know whether those vulnerabilities (if you could actually name any) had been patched, and if so, how quickly?
• How would you answer the same questions for the latest versions of the major OSS-based browsers?

If you can't immediately answer those questions, and provide yourself with objective, factual data to support your claims above, then please consider that you may just be projecting your own prejudices based on IE6 from many years ago onto the IE8 of today, while letting your own faith in OSS onto other browsers convince you that they are more secure even though you don't have access to all the facts.