Firefox Tops in Vulnerability List, Safari Follows it

Oh dear!, this is not the right time to hear this news as yesterday Firefox successfully completed five years. An application security vendor Cenzic yesterday released its security trends report for first half of 2009. Cenzic claims that Firefox browser led the race in total number of vulnerabilities.

According to Cenzic Firefox reported for 44 percent of all browser vulnerabilities, Apples’ safari had 35 percent of all browser vulnerabilities where does IE stand? IE has 15% of all browser vulnerabilities. Opera stands last with 6% share.

Vulnerability list of Browsers for first half of 2009

Browser	Percentage of vulnerabilities
Firefox	44
Safari	35
IE	15
Opera	6

The more popular Firefox become such as vulnerabilities

It is true that Firefox getting used by lot of users, stats won’t suggest that. As Firefox has only 23% share in browser market. Increase in vulnerabilities is due to its unable to handle plug-ins . Since all plug-ins are of third party, Firefox can’t update them automatically. As outdated plug-ins can be unstable and crashed the browser and also allows an attacker to run malicious code in user’s computer.

Plug-ins are the loop holes

But users don’t need to be afraid of this report having Firefox topped in vulnerability list , Firefox taking steps to alert users having outdated plug-ins and the future Firefox 3.6 version ill automatically detect and alert users to update their plug-ins. Now any user can check for outdated plug-ins installed in their browser by checking Mozilla plugin check released by Mozilla.

Firefox users no need to worry

Since the above plug-in update steps taken by Firefox in second half of 2009, those will definitely reflect how secure Firefox is in the next report to be given by Cenzic. Firefox users are on the safe ground as they are keep updating their browse with the updates released for Firefox.

Why IE has less vulnerabilities

It may be due to IE8 version released in first half of 2009 . IE8 is more secured when compared to IE7 offering smart screen filter to alert users from downloading malicious files on to their computers.