IE 9 Beats Other Browsers at Blocking Malicious Content

Orome1 writes with an article in Net Security. From the article: "Microsoft's Internet Explorer 9 has proved once again to be the best choice when it comes to catching attacks aimed at making the user download Web-based malware. This claim was made by NSS Labs in the recently released results (PDF) of a test conducted globally from May 27 through June 10 of the current year, which saw five of the most popular Web browsers pitted against each other. Windows Internet Explorer 9, Google Chrome 12, Mozilla Firefox 4, Apple Safari 5, and Opera 11 were tested with 1,188 malicious URLs — links that lead to a download that delivers a malicious payload or to a website hosting malware links."

Comments

If you block everything, your score is 100%

[Anonymous Coward]

MSIE got the highest "malware detection rate" because they used it in a mode where nearly every page is marked as "dangerous". It had the highest detection rate but also the highest false positive rate.

If I sit at the airport saying "that plane is going to crash" for every plane that takes off, and eventually get it right, that doesn't mean I'm able to predict which planes are going to crash (even though I got "100% of the crashes" right)...

Kind of correct.

[khasim]

The results are favorable to Microsoft, so there will be a ton of skepticism, investigation, and outright dismissal.

Yep. Mostly because Microsoft has a history of purchasing favourable "findings" from "independent" "research" firms.

However, when studies favorable to this particular community's ideologies are announced, none of that occurs, even though the same kinds of skepticism can and should be applied.

Kind of. The process and parameters should always be checked. But the other browsers do not have a history of their parent companies purchasing favourable "findings".

It's called "learning from experience".
There is no reason to forget every past instance when evaluating a new instance. Quite the opposite, in fact.