Recently a new study was conducted in order to test the security of the major players in the browser share market. Google’s Chrome managed to take first place with Internet Explorer a close second, while Firefox was found to lag behind in every aspect of the test. This is surprising news, given that just a few years ago Internet Explorer was touted as the worst browser for security.
The study was released on Friday and was conducted by Accuvant Labs. Several major areas were tested for browser security, including sandboxing, IT hardening, URL blacklisting, and plug-in security. Firefox was found to be ineffective in all of these categories, either due to an unimplemented feature, or a feature that was deemed ineffective. Internet Explorer fared better since sandboxing and plug-in security were found to be adequate. Chrome passed with flying colors in each of the categories except URL blacklisting, which all three major browsers flunked.
Accuvant’s conclusion is as follows:
The URL blacklisting services offered by all three browsers will stop fewer attacks than will go undetected. Both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer implement state-of-the-art antiexploitation technologies, but Mozilla Firefox lags behind without JIT hardening. While both Google Chrome and Microsoft Internet Explorer implement the same set of anti-exploitation technologies, Google Chrome’s plug-in security and sandboxing architectures are implemented in a more thorough and comprehensive manner. Therefore, we believe Google Chrome is the browser that is most secured against attack.
While Accuvant maintains that the study was independent in its analysis of the performance of all three browsers, it does reveal that the study was funded by Google. Think there’s a slant to this study at all or is Chrome really the most secure option for browsing the web?
[via NakedSecurity]
