Mozilla/Firefox Security

[sonsofwashington]

Just thought I post this up since I know a lot of you have made the switch. I still use IE, but have tried both. Anyway its for the non-techie crew. Quick read.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1775806,00.asp

[Baculus]

Thanks for the link.

Unfortunately Firefox is not a sure-fire way of being safe from malicious intentions. (I do use the browser myself.) I still recommend it, but an internet user still has to be armed with other programs, in addition to being aware and smart with their internet use, if they want to avoid any type of virus, exploits, or malware issues.

[sonsofwashington]

Agreed. The problem is that the more popular it gets the worst off for loyal users. Just because it is not Microsoft does not mean that Adware/Spyware/Hackers etc will not feed. It just means that there will be less predators and less defenders to keep predators away.

[herrmag]

I'll still take my chances with Firefox for the time being. IE has the majority of users, and until that changes dramatically, it will incur the most attention from those wishing to harm others. Oh, and the fact that many hackers hate Microsoft also keeps me leaning towards Mozilla/Firefox.

[Baculus]

I am curious if many hackers would avoid attacking a browser that they themselves use. And I wonder if their own usage affects their intentions when they create viruses or malware. But that may be a silly thought if many hackers do it for kicks without any foresight on its affects, even upon themselves.

[Chief skin]

A friend of mine who is a computer whiz swears by mozilla/firefox

[BG]

The thrill isn't there for hackers when it comes to Moz. Not enough people use it.

The spyware/malware issues are always around the dicey sections of the internet. If you are there, you should no you are putting your machine at risk no matter what browser you use...

[Leonard Washington]

The most famous was a URL-spoofing bug involving URLs with Internationalized Domain Names (IDN - www.mozilla.org/security/announce/mfsa2005-29.html). Basically, an attacker could set up a site that had, to outward appearances, the same URL as another site (such as www.ebay.com), but in fact the domain name would be in an international character set, not English. (Mozilla didn't actually fix this problem, which is less a bug in the program than a problem with the whole approach to IDNs; instead version 1.0.1 just disables IDN support by default.)

that's kinda scary

[Joe Sick]

Originally posted by Leonard Washington


that's kinda scary

Get the extension "spoofstick." It displays the real domain name, to guard against phishing and other types of fraud using fake urls.

The scariest thing I heard (thing I read it on slashdot) is that hackers can get to MS IE flaws through Mozilla / Firebird.