IE more secure than Mozilla?

A new report by Symantec states that last year the Mozilla Foundation disclosed 25 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities, 18 of which were classified as high-risk by Symantec. IE by comparison released 13 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities, 8 of which were classified as high-risk.

Read the full article here:

http://news.com.com/Symantec+Mozilla...3-5873273.html

This seems odd to me, because I feel like IE is the main conduit by which parasites and spyware are introduced to your machine. Is the parasite problem just as high with Firefox or Moziilla?

While Mozilla may have more bugs, IE is used by more people so it is therefor much more "profitable" to exploit IE. The other part is how dangerous are these bugs? I think on average, bugs in IE are more dangerous than those in Mozilla.

i dunno boss. i'm gonna stick with firefox. with the no script extension and my firewalls i feel pretty secure. as long as i don't mess with any untrusted sites i'll have no worries mate.

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Originally posted here by roswell1329
A new report by Symantec states that last year the Mozilla Foundation disclosed 25 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities, 18 of which were classified as high-risk by Symantec. IE by comparison released 13 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities, 8 of which were classified as high-risk.

Read the full article here:

http://news.com.com/Symantec+Mozilla...3-5873273.html

This seems odd to me, because I feel like IE is the main conduit by which parasites and spyware are introduced to your machine. Is the parasite problem just as high with Firefox or Moziilla?

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Come now roswell, you know better than this! The only thing guarunteed about any statistic is that it is incorrect to some degree. This is a common Microsoft tactic to discredit the open source app du jour. How about if we compare the amount of time between reported vulnerability and official response that closes the hole?

I know what your point is here, and I won't fall for it, you mook! :D

Heheh...no point at all. Just interesting info. I guess it's interesting to me because I usually trust Symantec. I haven't heard any disparaging remarks about them so far, so I'm willing to give more weight to their opinions than other random drek I hear on the net.

Anyone have any problems with Symantec's credibility?

Read Tristan Nitot's reply:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,3...9219186,00.htm

The other thing to remember is how long has IE been out, compared to Firefox. IE is going on to version 7 and Firefox isn't even version 2. Seems like a pretty skewed comparison to me.

Something else to note in that study. Symantec did say that the study only dealt with vender-confirmed bugs. At the time of the article, Microsoft had 19 vulnerabilities they had yet to confirm whereas Mozilla had only 3. That's on par with Microsoft's typical handling of security holes. "If we ignore it, it will either go away, or people will lose interest."

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Microsoft's typical handling of security holes. "If we ignore it, it will either go away, or people will lose interest."

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That is why open source products like Firefox rock. They accept whatever is there, no hard feelings
and no buisness tactics.