On Jan 22, 2010, at 10:37 PM, William Pitcock wrote:
On Fri, 2010-01-22 at 22:16 -0500, Steven Bellovin wrote:
On Jan 22, 2010, at 12:26 AM, Bruce Williams wrote:
The problem with IE is the same problem as Windows, the basic design is fundementally insecure and "timely updates" can't fix that.
You do realize, of course, that IE is recording less than half the security flaw rate of Firefox? (See http://prosecure.netgear.com/community/security-blog/2009/11/web-browser-vul...)
Consider for a moment that both Firefox and Safari are built on open-source code where the code can be audited. As a result, it is clear why Firefox and Safari are more "insecure" than IE, it is simply because the code is there to be audited.
Frankly, they are all about the same security-wise.
I think that that's wishful thinking. IE has fewer security problems because Microsoft has put a tremendous amount of effort -- and often fought its own developers -- in a disciplined software development environment with careful, structured security reviews by people who have the power to say "no, you can't ship this". They've also put a lot of effort into building and using security tools. (For earlier comments by me on this subject, see http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb/blog/2009-04/2009-04-29.html) I'm not a fan of Windows. I think it's ugly and bloated, and I don't like it as a user environment. I'm typing this on a Mac (which I like for its JFW properties, not its security; I do not think it is more secure than Vista or Windows 7); I'm also a heavy user -- and a developer -- of NetBSD. If the world suddenly switched its OS of choice away from Windows, I wouldn't weep. But I also would and do hope that the other platforms, be they open or closed source, would learn from what Bill Gates has done well. --Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb