Mozilla: The Honeymoon is over

[rajesh]

When Firefox’s Mozilla came onto the scene four months ago it looked like an end to the constant struggle against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer security vulnerabilities was finally in sight. The promise was almost too good to be true: a viable alternative that had been designed with a security conscious approach, no pop-ups and none of IE’s vulnerabilities.

The word from the early adopters was positive: smoother, faster and more secure. Their praise coupled with CERT’s recommendation that customers switch browsers away from IE has pushed Mozilla into the mainstream. It has now been downloaded nearly 27 million times and for the first time in three years, IE’s market share has fallen below 90%. Mozilla’s now as commonplace in City offices as it is with tech-savvy home users.

But how is Mozilla faring now that the honeymoon period is over?

Certainly cracks have been appearing. The number of vulnerabilities has risen dramatically in the last quarter and ScanSafe has noticed a rise in the number of exploits it is stopping on Mozilla. In fact, when you compare the 8 vulnerabilities announced by Mozilla in the last quarter with the 7 new vulnerabilities announced by Microsoft things aren’t looking so rosy.

Read the full story @
*www.ebcvg.com/articles.php?id=673

 

[Nemesis]

Oh well. People are now targetting Mozilla as it is rapidly gaining popularity. It was bound to happen. But at least they are quickly plugging in whatever holes are appearing. And MS still have to keep patching IE so it still isn't time to say good bye to dear old FireFox

 

[tuxfan]

How old is firefox and how old is IE? If IE has so many holes inspite if it being so old, what can one say?

Secondly, Firefox source code is open. So it is easier to find out those bugs by studying the source code as well. Imagine what happens if IE source code is open I feel, we will find plethora of new bugs, vulnerabilities and loads of unwanted "features" :roll:

 

[mohit]

it all depends on the popularity of the software .... see IE is the most widely targetted browser as it is still the most popular and there is a huge user database of IE . Now as FF is gaining popularity rapidly , surely people are going to target it also. It is the same reason for Apple's OS being more secure than Windows as the latter is much much more widely used.

 

[grinning_devil]

*secunia.com/product/4227/#advisories
36% of secunia advisories in FF hasnt been fixed yet

0% in Opera hasnt been fixed yet.

30% of secunia vulnerabilities hasnt been patched yet in IE and 14% are partially fixed.

u just cant prevent urself frm comparing FF with Opera ..do u????

 

[GNUrag]

Start a thread with title Browser somewhere in the subject line and you'll find Indyan inside it promoting Oprah... or was it Opera??

 

[khattam_]

I aint promoting OPera.
I just quoted secunia and gave some facts!!
Is it wrong to do so?

I didnt ask you to use Opera.

Why are you the fan of that adware anyway......... Do you have an illegal copy of the full version or what??
I wonder why would someone buy a browser when good alternatives come for free (and are even open source...................)

 

[khattam_]

I aint gonna reply to that and start another war

I promised not to here

Anyway,u need to use it to understand.And it is ur choice.

Trust me I have used it a lot more than you have....................... But now I aint gonna do that.......................

 

[devilhead_satish]

I'm with you Indyan. Opera rocks. Mozilla's nowhere near Opera in trerms of features. BTW the only feature missing in Opera is the View Source of Selection. And I said only. Its got everything else a browser should have

 

[rohan]

The worst thing of Firefox is it's Next and Previous browsing. It completely loads the page again or most parts of it. That sucks. It can use it from it's cache too and that's what I wnt.

Security, I've never been concerned about it. I use FF for about a month, patronized it, but some features of it really screwed me and I again went back to Opera.

1 thing for sure: FF is over-hyped.

 

[NikhilVerma]

FF isn't even that secure.... I still get spywares even if I use FF.
The features are also lesser than Opera or IE...

And one thing I hate about all the browsers is that they have worst page saving capability...
I use IE to save pages... FF comes second(it misses some dynamic content and saves files with no format if not specified), and Opera is the worst one...

The only reason I'm using FF right now is the Flashgot extension, BB code, and googlebar...

But I think that adding extensions makes the browser even less secure because extensions are coded by normal users so there can be security holes in it...

Opera is the best in this matter...