Symantec, among other things makers of shoddy “security” bloatware for Windows, have just stated a bunch of lies about browser/OS security.
According to the report, 25 vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities were disclosed for the Mozilla browsers during the first half of 2005, “the most of any browser studied”. Eighteen of these were classified as high severity.
What they don’t mention is that they’re only counting announced vulnerabilities. That is, if Microsoft denies the existence of one, it isn’t counted.
The last 6 months have been carefully chosen, too, because it was the only period where the Mozilla browsers had more vulnerabilities. If they counted the 6 months before, the story would be quite different.
While they say “high severity”, that doesn’t really say a lot. Indeed…
Symantec admitted that “at the time of writing, no widespread exploitation of any browser except Microsoft Internet Explorer has occurred”, but added that it “expects this to change as alternative browsers become increasingly widely deployed.”
Right. A pity that that argument is simply not true. Not all software is created equal, and not all development teams have the same priorities.
Not to mention that Firefox vulnerabilities are usually fixed in 1-3 days. There are critical IE holes that haven’t been patched (or indeed acknowledged) by MS in years.
How many cases of spyware or other malware infestation from Firefox (other than downloading an executable and running it manually, of course - but then, the browser doesn’t have anything to do with it) have you heard about? None, so far, I’ll bet. IE? Too many to count.
Why the slightly angry tone of this article? Because Symantec are lying. No, I won’t replace that word with a “nicer” one. Their business is being a parasite, and Firefox-using (or Mac-using, or Linux-using) people tend to need “fixers of Windows security problems” less and less, if at all. So they create FUD. They shriek “don’t change to IE (or Windows) alternatives! They’re actually less secure! Keep using IE, and our products, and everything will be alright!”
Nothing scares a parasite so much as the idea of their victims getting rid of them. Firefox scares them. Alternative operating systems scare them. Even security-conscious users scare them.
A thought: if Microsoft ever released a “mostly secure” version of Windows, Symantec would quickly go out of business, don’t you think?
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“A thought: if Microsoft ever released a “mostly secure” version of Windows, Symantec would quickly go out of business, don’t you think?”
But they wont. And Symantec will continue releasing security tools and mking money for something that you shouldnt need.
FWIW i dont like Symantec either. Why ? Because i have done count less reinstalls of windows ( ugg ) because the norton’s installer messed up or the installation corupeted.