German Government Endorses Chrome As Most Secure Browser

New submitter beta2 writes "Several articles are noting that the German IT security agency BSI is endorsing Google Chrome browser: 'BSI ticked off Chrome's anti-exploit sandbox technology, which isolates the browser from the operating system and the rest of the computer; its silent update mechanism and Chrome's habit of bundling Adobe Flash, as its reasons for the recommendation. ... BSI also recommended Adobe Reader X — the version of the popular PDF reader that, like Chrome, relies on a sandbox to protect users from exploits — and urged citizens to use Windows' Auto Update feature to keep their PCs abreast of all OS security fixes. To update applications, BSI gave a nod to Secunia's Personal Software Inspector, a free utility that scan a computer for outdated software and point users to appropriate downloads.'"

Comments

Adobe worship much?

[icebike]

It would seem to me that "Chrome's habit of bundling Adobe Flash" would be a detriment. But that's just me.

They went on to recommend Adobe Reader X. I agree that pdf readers in a sandbox make a lot of sense, its just that I have no particular reason to trust Adobe, since it was their doing that made PDFs unsafe in the first place. With Chrome's built in PDF render engine, I find I seldom have to use the adobe plugin at all any more. (And when I do, I'm always suspicious).

If Google wanted to do us all a favor they would to with Flash content what they did with PDF documents, and add their own in-browser render engine.

That being said, I do like the sandboxing that Chrome supplies, and Google Chrome is my browser of choice.

Some people don't like keying search terms in the URL bar, and other minor objections that, when investigated, all amount to "its not firefox". I've seen some reports of incredibly slow page fetches, which are usually traceable to external things (chrome likes to use multiple concurrent connections, and swamps some anti-virus packages that operate as a proxy server).

For me, the speed can't be beat on any of the platforms I use (linux and windows - various flavors of each). I prefer Google's builds to those in the Chromium Open Source project but both work very well.

Extensions can enhance security of Firefox

[ChadL]

I use Firefox because it has NoScript and SSLEverywhere, that Chrome doesn't (or doesn't that have equivilent funcionality); thus making Firefox more secure for my usage paterns.