Microsoft claims it has not gained anything from the recent spate of security flaws that have been discovered in Firefox, even though the open-source browser is a rising rival to the software giant's Internet Explorer. Peter Watson, chief security advisor at Microsoft Australia and New Zealand, told ZDNet Australia that the software maker did not get any pleasure from seeing Firefox suffer a string of security vulnerabilities, despite the open-source browser's growth seemingly being stunted over recent months. "I don't think it creates any benefit for us or anybody in the ecosystem to turn around and say, 'It's good that this company has a whole load of security vulnerabilities'," said Watson. The Mozilla Foundation launched Firefox last November with the argument that people would be safer if they switched over from IE. However, as Firefox's popularity has grown--the browser captured more than 5 percent of the browser market in its first six months--a significant number of flaws have been discovered. Last month, Symantec published a report that claimed Mozilla's browsers were less secure than Microsoft's IE. Watson was humble in his assessment of Firefox's security issues, claiming that all new technologies are targeted by criminals: "Every new technology that comes out, somebody at some time will try and look for a way to exploit that for illegal purposes." Watson explained that Microsoft's goal is to help build a secure and reliable platform for its own--and rival--technologies. "Our whole strategy around trustworthy computing is that we want the computing platform to be as reliable as possible," he said. Watson's attitude is not surprising, according to James Turner, security analyst at Frost & Sullivan, who said Microsoft would "save millions" if security were no longer an issue. "Microsoft is not a security company. For them, every dollar they have to spend on R&D in security is dissipation from R&D for their productivity tools. It's reasonable to assume that Microsoft would love all the viruses and worms to vanish overnight. It would save them millions and millions of dollars,' said Turner. However, Turner admitted that Microsoft could be hiding its satisfaction at Mozilla's despair for other reasons. "No one in their right mind would gloat over the vulnerabilities of a rival, because pride comes before the fall," he said. Source: News.com
Thats interseting but i'm still gonna use Firefox, i'd hate not being able to use tabs now, its so much easier.
Thats very surprising that Microsoft would say that they feel it would not benefit them, but i would think that they are hiding their feelings and just bit their tongue on the subject for now!
Firefox certainly has had a nasty string of vulnerabilities lately, there's no doubt of that. The thing I question here is that it is actually less secure than IE. It seems strange to say that a browser exploit in Firefox could go further to compromise a system than one in IE, which is tightly integrated into the guts of Windows. It's also worth noting that any brower flaw is much more serious on Windows than in any other OS, as Windows has very poorly implemented user privilege seperation. In any case, both popular browsers need to get their act together security-wise and start coding right from the ground up. If it's time to say, "We've learned from our mistakes, and hindsight being 20/20, we'd do things very differently the second time around. Time to do a complete rewrite from the ground up!", then so be it. In the meantime, there are browser plugins for Firefox, such as NoScript, that can increase the browser's overall security exponentially by putting more control over what webpages can do in your hands. And now that Opera has gone free as in beer (but unfortunately still not free as in the recipe), we have another choice in the free & standards-compliant browser arena. All the best, -AT P.S. - It's also worth mentioning that the vulnerabilities that are currently open in Firefox are considered non-critical, while those still unpatched in IE 6 are considered highly critical.
