(no subject)
- From: Keyboard Cowboy <KBCowboy@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: PCTechTalk - Freelists <pctechtalk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 08:29:45 -0700
A very interesting read from Windows Secret Newsletter, edited by
Brian Livingston and Paul Thurrott. The article was written by Brian
Livingston.
See "Top Story" below --
Regards from
Bob -- the "Keyboard Cowboy",
,,,,,,,,
Ô¿Ô¬
Cincinnati, Ohio
Scottsdale, Arizona
==========<[0]>===========
Friday 5/13/2005 8:24:16 AM
On golf....
An interesting thing about golf is that no matter how badly you play,
it's always possible to play worse!
~~ Anonymous
==========<[0]>===========
TOP STORY ? info you need to make Windows work
Is Firefox still safer than IE?
By Brian Livingston
The popular Firefox browser received a security upgrade, known as
version 1.0.4, when the Mozilla Foundation released the new code on
May 11. This upgrade closes a security hole that could allow a hacker
Web site to install software without a visitors' knowledge or
approval.
This is the fourth minor update to Firefox since the open-source
browser's 1.0 release on Nov. 9, 2004. That doesn't seem like very
many patches to me, compared with Firefox's dominant competition,
Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), which is included in every copy of
Windows. But I've heard a surprising amount of comment that Firefox
might no longer be as secure as IE.
At Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC), held
in Seattle April 25-27, for example, an IE product manager made this
case explicitly. Firefox had had (at that time) "three major
releases," she said, while Internet Explorer 6.0 had had none. This
statement was presented as though a lack of upgrades to IE was a
benefit.
In fact, Microsoft has released at least 20 major security patches for
Windows or Internet Explorer since November 2004. Most of these
patches were rated "Critical," Microsoft's most severe security alert
level.
The evidence I've seen so far indicates that Firefox remains much more
secure than IE. But it's worth our time to take a closer look.
IE users were exposed for 200 days in 2004
Some remarkable statistics comparing the major Web browsers have been
developed by Scanit NV, an international security firm with
headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, and Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
The company painstakingly researched the dates when vulnerabilities
were first discovered in various browsers, and the dates when the
holes were subsequently patched.
The firm found that IE was wide open for a total of 200 days in 2004,
or 54% of the year, to exploits that were "in the wild" on the
Internet.
The Firefox browser and its older sibling Mozilla had no periods in
2004 when a security flaw went unpatched before exploits started
circulating on the Net. With the latest 1.0.4 upgrade, Firefox has
retained its "patch-before-hackers-can-strike" record so far in 2005,
as well.
These statistics are so important to understanding the "attack
surface" of the major browsers that we should break down this study
into its individual findings:
? IE suffered from unpatched security holes for 359 days in 2004.
According to Scanit, there were only 7 days out of 366 in 2004 during
which IE had no unpatched security holes. This means IE had no
official patch available against well-publicized vulnerabilities for
98% of the year.
? Attacks on IE weaknesses circulated "in the wild" for 200 of those
days. Scanit records the first sighting of actual working hacker code
on the Internet. In this way, the firm was able to determine how many
days an IE user was exposed to possible harm. When Microsoft released
a patch for an IE problem, Scanit "stopped the clock" on the period of
vulnerability.
? Mozilla and Firefox patched all vulnerabilities before hacker code
circulated. Scanit found that the Mozilla family of browsers, which
share the same code base, went only 26 days in 2004 during which a
Windows user was using a browser with a known security hole. Another
30 days involved a weakness that was only in the Mac OS version.
Scanit reports that each vulnerability was patched before exploits
were running on the Web. This resulted in zero days when a Mozilla or
Firefox user could have been infected.
The Opera browser also experienced no days during which unpatched
holes faced actual exploits, but Scanit began keeping statistics on
Opera only since September 2004.
To see Scanit's visual timeline of these holes, exploits, and fixes,
visit the firm's Internet Explorer page. On that page, click "Next
Page" to see the timelines for Mozilla, Firefox, and Opera.
Firefox fixes take days, IE takes months
From the record to date, the Mozilla/Firefox team has shown that new
security discoveries typically result in a patch being released in
only a week or so.
This was certainly true in the case of Firefox version 1.0.4. The
primary security hole that was closed by that version was unexpectedly
publicized by the French Security Incident Response Team (FrSIRT) on
May 5. The Firefox patch was released only six days later. (The
apparent discoverer of the flaw, the Greyhats Security Group, had been
working responsibly with Firefox's development team and criticized the
leak.)
Perhaps the responsiveness of the Mozilla development group will shame
Microsoft into fixing security holes much faster in the future. The
situation has become so bad that eEye Digital Security, a respected
consulting service, maintains an "upcoming advisories" page showing
how much time Microsoft is allowing critical problems that are
reported to the Redmond company to go uncorrected.
At present, eEye's count reveals that three critical unpatched issues
currently affect Microsoft's products. None of these have gone
unpatched longer than 60 days, the period after which eEye considers a
patch to be "overdue." But some critical, widely-known security holes
went as long as six months in 2003 and 2004 without an official fix
being made available by Microsoft.
Another security firm that tracks security holes in IE, Firefox, and
many other applications is Secunia, based in Copenhagen, Denmark. As
of today, Secunia reports that there are still 19 unpatched security
flaws in IE, the most severe of which is rated "highly critical."
Firefox has only 4 unpatched flaws, all of which are rated "less
critical" or "not critical," the lowest severity rating. Opera has
none.
Microsoft officials often excuse their tardiness in fixing security
holes in IE by saying that the code is so complex that any fix has a
high likelihood of breaking something else. Well, who integrated IE so
tightly into the operating system that the browser is so delicate?
It's Microsoft's own poor programming that causes much of the software
giant's very visible problems.
Microsoft employs some of the best software developers in the world.
The company enjoys a cash reserve of $35 billion and is highly
profitable. Yet a tiny company that builds open-source browser
software is making the Redmond giant look foolish and incompetent in
securing its products.
I have no particular attachment to the Mozilla Foundation or its
products. If the foundation's browser software was a threat to Windows
users, I'd say so. At the present time, several serious unpatched
holes are known to exist in IE, while few or none plague Firefox. This
isn't a religious issue, it's just a fact.
The foundation announced two weeks ago that they'd surpassed 50
million downloads of the free Firefox browser. The application is
largely responsible for knocking down IE from a 94% market share in
May 2004 to 87% in April 2005, according to OneStat. That's a
remarkable accomplishment, considering that IE is free and comes
preinstalled with Windows. Sites with a base of expert Windows users
report much higher levels of Firefox usage.
How to keep Firefox upgraded
No matter how fast Firefox's developers update it, it doesn't do you
any good unless you've got the browser configured to notify you of
updates. This is a simple matter, but it's worth making sure you have
it right:
? Enable update checking. In Firefox, click Tools, Options, Advanced.
Ensure that the selection for Periodically check for updates is on,
both for Firefox and for My Extensions and Themes. This is the default
setting, so most Firefox users will automatically get notices of
updates.
? Check for upgrades manually, if desired. You should see a dialog box
informing you of new updates as the Mozilla Foundation releases them.
There's a random delay, however, so every user doesn't try to download
a new version on the same day. To check whether there's an update that
applies to you, click the red up-arrow that's in the upper-right
toolbar of the Firefox menu area.
? Download the latest version. If a dialog box tells you an update is
available, close the window, then open Firefox's download page. If you
want a version other than Windows U.S. English, click the Other
Systems and Languages link and select your preferred version. Download
the executable file to a temporary area of your hard disk, then close
all apps (including Firefox itself) and run the installer.
It's no longer necessary or recommended that you uninstall Firefox
before upgrading to a new version. A few glitches affected upgrades to
versions 1.0.1 and 1.0.2, but this has been corrected since 1.0.3.
It's unfortunate that hackers are so attracted to browsers as a way to
take over users' computers. But that's where the money is, as bank
robber Willie Sutton once said. We have to accept a certain amount of
upgrading as the price of using complex Windows applications. But we
can reduce the threat to ourselves and others by using browsers that
have a proven record of rapid, responsible development.
I'd like to thank reader Terry Engles for his help researching this
topic. To send us more information about the browser wars, or to send
us a tip on any other subject, visit WindowsSecrets.com/contact.
You'll receive a gift certificate for a book, CD, or DVD of your
choice if you send us a comment that we print.
Brian Livingston is editor of the Windows Secrets Newsletter and the
coauthor of Windows 2000 Secrets, Windows Me Secrets, and eight other
books.
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