Firefox and Safari become focus of new browser attacks
By Jonathan Schlaffer
We all knew this day was coming as many users have become fed up with Internet Explorer; it’s slow, it’s features are outdated and it used to be full of security holes like swiss cheese but as hackers switch focus that may no longer be the case. Safari and Firefox have gained a lot more traction and are becoming the focus of more attacks, more often.
According to the Washington Post, there were no attacks on Internet Explorer this month but Firefox and Safari both had several vulnerabilities. Mozilla had to release two updates in a span of six weeks to fix five critical security vulnerabilities; all of which were related to JavaScript.
Firefox 2.0.0.13 isn’t affected by the exploits but it’s old news, Firefox 3 Beta 5 is where it’s at; in comparison Firefox 2.0.x is as slow as molasses in winter.
Safari 3.1 was released to patch 13 holes present on Mac OSX, Windows XP and Vista; some of which were related to Quicktime.
Apple still has the brilliant idea to distribute Safari over Apple Update for Windows users so if you forget to uncheck that installation box, you’ll get it installed.
Just because you’ve decided to switch from Internet Explorer to Firefox or Safari doesn’t mean you are necessarily safe any more. Who will be the first to create an alternative "alternative" browser? I’m sure one will be coming soon and in five to ten years after its release, it too will become the target of hackers.
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April 27th, 2008
I suppose that’s part of the reason to have alternative browsers… with such a heavily used piece of software, diversity is good. And alternate browsers were especially important on Windows while IE 6 was current, I would say. :p