Firefox just as vulnerable as IE?

[David]

I just received this security advisory (http://secunia.com/advisories/14017/) about Mozilla/Firefox. Naturally, Firefox is not immune and I suspect that recent exposure will only goad those who get a kick out of this sort of thing to "have a go".

Take a look at this (http://secunia.com/product/4227/) for a full list of Firefox 1.0 security alerts.

[James]

I'm in Blackpool at the moment visiting our IT department.

They feel the same will happen to Linux - as it becomes more popular it will become more of a target.

So are hackers attacking Microsoft per se? I don't think so - they spend time writing software to attack whatever is on the majority of machines.

Firefox is increasing in popularity. Will it increase in popularity with malicious code writers?

[francis]

It'll be interesting to see what happens. Mac OS is Linux based and they make great show of it being open source and not attacked by virus writers. In theory it should be more secure and better written as Unix has been around since the early 60s and has therefore had waaay more input. But, we'll see.

There will no doubt be something nasty coming FF's way (hopefully they won't get as far into the red or find another 70 advisories to match IE6 (http://secunia.com/product/11/)) and the Mozilla Organisation will be looked at closely and their response time will no-doubt be bashed around the web for weeks/months. Quickly scanning that FF vulnerability it looks like it affects Pre 1.0 versions of the product. FF users are probably like Opera users and keep the product pretty much up to date. The same is probably true of Mozilla - I'm on an alpha build of 1.8 that's not been around long.

Still, now that my new toy is here, I could always switch to Safari...

[Phil]

Yes, although "security through obscurity" is not a valid defence, it does play a large part in making FF and MacOS appear less susceptible to online attacks. I agree with Francis that OSX's Unix core and strong permission system make it a lot less prone to Windows, ActiveX style vulnerabilites, but if it had as high a market share as Windows (IE) I'm sure that Mac (and FF) users would have a lot less to be smug about.

The only way to ensure total defence against all threates is to unplug whatever machine you're using and put it back in the box!

As for Francis' new toy...surely a new blog style topic beckons? :P