Mozilla's popularity stressing its security image
Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2005 5:23 pm
Critics of the open-source Firefox browser took its security track record to task this week after a biannual Internet security report noted that the application had almost twice as many vulnerabilities as Internet Explorer in the first half of 2005, with a higher fraction of those flaws being severe.
"Mozilla's popularity has gone from almost zero to double digits, so they have had to deal with a lot of sudden attention," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for antivirus firm F-Secure. "Since Mozilla has become popular, people have been looking for more vulnerabilities."
And researchers appear to be finding flaws with greater frequency. In the first six months of 2005, the Mozilla family of browsers had 25 vulnerabilities, with 72 percent rated as high severity, according to the Internet Security Threat Report released by Symantec this week. During the same period, Microsoft's Internet Explorer had 13 confirmed vulnerabilities, with 62 percent rated as high severity, the report said. Symantec is the parent company of SecurityFocus.
That poses a problem for the open-source browser's security image. Much of the popularity of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox has been built on the browser being a secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In June 2004, a pop-up toolbar's ability to infect computers when their users browsed a malicious Web site with Internet Explorer gave Firefox additional momentum to start claiming market share from Microsoft's well-known browser. Mozilla's browsers accounted for almost 7 percent of popular Web traffic as of May 2005, the most recent data available, according to analytics firm WebSideStory.
Story continues : [url=\"http://securityfocus.com/news/11327\"]HERE[/url]
"Mozilla's popularity has gone from almost zero to double digits, so they have had to deal with a lot of sudden attention," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for antivirus firm F-Secure. "Since Mozilla has become popular, people have been looking for more vulnerabilities."
And researchers appear to be finding flaws with greater frequency. In the first six months of 2005, the Mozilla family of browsers had 25 vulnerabilities, with 72 percent rated as high severity, according to the Internet Security Threat Report released by Symantec this week. During the same period, Microsoft's Internet Explorer had 13 confirmed vulnerabilities, with 62 percent rated as high severity, the report said. Symantec is the parent company of SecurityFocus.
That poses a problem for the open-source browser's security image. Much of the popularity of the Mozilla Foundation's Firefox has been built on the browser being a secure alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. In June 2004, a pop-up toolbar's ability to infect computers when their users browsed a malicious Web site with Internet Explorer gave Firefox additional momentum to start claiming market share from Microsoft's well-known browser. Mozilla's browsers accounted for almost 7 percent of popular Web traffic as of May 2005, the most recent data available, according to analytics firm WebSideStory.
Story continues : [url=\"http://securityfocus.com/news/11327\"]HERE[/url]
