Google-Funded Study Knocks Firefox Security

Sparrowvsrevolution writes "Researchers at the security firm Accuvant released a study Friday that gauges the security features of the top three web browsers. Accuvant admits the study was funded by Google, and naturally, Chrome came out on top. More surprising is that Internet Explorer was rated nearly as secure as Chrome, while Firefox is described as lacking many modern security safeguards. Though the study seems to have been performed objectively, it won't help Google's fraying partnership with Mozilla." The full research document is available here (PDF), and it goes into much greater detail than the Forbes article. Accuvant also published the tools and data they used in the study, which should help to evaluate their objectivity.

Comments

Re:Chrome and IE are the most secure browsers

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Anyone who still says that IE is insecure browser just doesn't know what he is talking about..

I beg to differ. IE comes tied-in with Windows and is the most widely used web browser in the world. That also means that it is the most targeted web browser by people bent on exploiting its vulnerabilities in order to gain unlawful access to someone else's computer. Even though it might have less security flaws than Opera or Firefox, you can bet your gonads that the proportion of security flaws that actually get exploited on IE is a lot bigger than in either of these two browsers. It comes with the turf. Of course, this doesn't mean that IE is inherently less secure than Firefox. You're right to say it isn't. Still, if I had to choose between IE and FF based only on security, I"d go for FF simply because it's probably a lot less targeted. I have no data to back up my claim, though, and could be completely wrong. Does anyone have any numbers on this?