Firefox most vulnerable browser of 2008

Posted on Sunday, April 19 2009 @ 5:06 CEST by Thomas De Maesschalck
A report by security firm Secunia found that Firefox was the most vulnerable browser last year, a total of 115 vulnerabilities were found in Mozilla's popular browser. By comparison, IE had a 31, Opera 30 and Safari 32.

One of the main reasons why so many flaws are found in Firefox is because this browser is open source:
In Mozilla's defence, there could well be a reason why its browser appears to have had far more vulnerabilities than competing packages: Firefox, unlike the others analysed by Secunia, is open source. This allows researches unprecedented access to the internal workings, and makes it far easier to spot and exploit vulnerabilities in the code. It also makes such bugs and their respective fixes uniquely public – where it is easy for Microsoft to quietly fix several bugs in a single patch and tot up only one vulnerability report, Firefox patches outline each problem that is solved and generate multiple vulnerability reports each time.
Source: Bit Tech


About the Author

Thomas De Maesschalck

Thomas has been messing with computer since early childhood and firmly believes the Internet is the best thing since sliced bread. Enjoys playing with new tech, is fascinated by science, and passionate about financial markets. When not behind a computer, he can be found with running shoes on or lifting heavy weights in the weight room.



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