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637 Million Insecure Web Surfers - Microsoft Forced to Launch SmartScreen Filter
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Have you updated your browser recently? Are you running the latest version available for your choice of web browser? If you answered that in the negative, you may be one among the 637 million other users who are at risk for using old versions of browsers.
A group of researchers from IBM’s Internet Security systems, Google and ETH Zurich have released a study which says that 40 percent of the total internet users are using outdated versions of web browsers which make them vulnerable to attack, thus posing a security risk to any vital information stored on the user’s computer. The paper, titled “Understanding the Web Browser Threat” carried out the study using data provided by Google from their web search queries between January 2007 and June 2008. The researchers were able to determine that out of the 1.4 billion internet users worldwide, 637 million used outdated versions of browsers.
The overall browser share was reported as
Internet Explorer - 78 percent
Firefox - 16 percent
Safari - 3 percent
Opera - 0.8 percent
Mozilla Firefox 2 was found out to be the most secure browser of the lot, followed by Apple’s Safari 3, Opera 9 and Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. Interestingly, the Firefox users were found most likely to upgrade to the latest version of their browsers. (Editor’s note : This is probably because Firefox users are the most tech savvy and keep themselves abreast of latest developments in the tech world. The very fact that they use a browser other than IE proves my hypothesis.) 83.3 percent of the users were using very recent release of the browser, significantly higher than Safari (65.3 percent), and Opera (56.1 percent). Not surprisingly, Internet Explorer users were last of the pack with only 47.6 percent of them running the latest release.
The above stats are not surprising at all. The Firefox community is an open-source community and the patches for any Firefox vulnerability are released instantly. The browser checks for updates often and downloads them in the background. Opera on the other hand checks for updates on start up, automatically. Apple’s Safari, however, takes help from the company’s stand alone Updater software. Internet Explorer stands out of the lot, since Microsoft releases updates once every month. Even though Internet Explorer leads the browser market share, it is majorly due to the fact that it is the default OS shipped with the world’s most popular Operating System. Interestingly, other browsers in the market are catching up fast, with Firefox rising to 18.41% ( as of May) from 17.76 & as of April 2008.
Microsoft has, apparently, now decided to tighten its laces and start running the browser race. The company, recently, unveiled a host of new security features of their upcoming release of Internet Explorer 8. Internet Explorer has always lacked the features, which have been steadily rolled out from Mozilla Labs and Opera. Both the browsers have had built-in security measures, which Microsoft finally made a part of Internet Explorer 7.
The new features announced for Internet Explorer 8 include a set of cross-site scripting defenses to defeat hackers looking to steal cookies and browser history, logging keystrokes, stealing credentials, or just evading phishing filters. The browser, which is currently in public beta, will also feature an upgraded version of the phishing filter found in IE7, which Microsoft is calling SmartScreen filter. With phishing attacks on the rise, it clearly seems that Microsoft doesn’t want to fall behind in the race.
So what version of your browser are you running?
“Mozilla Firefox 2 was found out to be the most secure browser of the lot”.. How exactly did you come to this conclusion? I couldn’t find the report saying anything of the sort.
I use Opera 9.51, which is the most secure browser available today with no open vulnerabilities unlike Firefox and Internet explorer which have plenty.