| Opinion: Firefox feeling heat, but still trumps IE security |
Sep. 29, 2005
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols argues that the number of security holes that occur isn't as telling as how they're handled. Vaughan-Nichols writes . . .
Recently, there was quite a flap about a Symantec study, which showed that -- horrors! -- Firefox had more security holes than Internet Explorer.
But, what did Symantec's Internet Threat Report really show?
I asked Elias Levy, aka Aleph One, former moderator of Bugtrac and today, a Symantec architect. He told me that Symantec reported on the number of flaws that had been confirmed by the vendor.
"Mozilla is forthcoming about vulnerabilities," Levy said, whereas "it takes Microsoft far longer to acknowledge vulnerability."
How much longer? "In the last reporting period, the second half of last year, Microsoft had acknowledged 13 vulnerabilities. We've now revised it to 31. The difference is that now Microsoft has acknowledged these vulnerabilities."
That's more than double the number of problems Microsoft started with.
In the first half of this year, Symantec reported 18 high-severity vulnerabilities for the Mozilla browsers and eight high-severity holes for Internet Explorer. Were Microsoft to reveal more problems as time went on at the same rate the company did last year, the result would be 22 high-severity vulnerabilities.
The numbers really don't tell the story though. Levy and I agree on that. It's also a matter of what's done about those security holes.
It's not that Firefox, and other open-source programs, don't have security holes. They do. The key difference, from an open-source advocate's viewpoint, is that everyone can see what's going on, so as soon as a problem is reported it can be fixed.
As Chris Beard, head of products for Mozilla Corp., told me, "We believe that Mozilla's open and transparent development process, bug bounties, and open-source nature -- which allows for virtually unlimited peer review -- combine to accelerate both the time to discovery and resolution of potential vulnerabilities."
But you expect people like us to say that, don't you? Well, guess what? Symantec agrees with us.
"Mozilla can turn around on a dime," Levy said. "Open-source programmers can recognize a problem and patch it in days or weeks."
And as for Microsoft?
"If a vulnerability is reported to Microsoft, Microsoft doesn't acknowledge it for at least a month or two. There's always a certain lag between knowing about a bug and acknowledging it," Levy said.
Some of them are a lot older than that. One hole that is more than six months old now.
Microsoft also takes its own sweet time in patching problems. After all, "Microsoft has gone to a single patch Tuesday," Levy said.
Now, there are some good reasons for that. The constant flood of Microsoft patching was overwhelming understaffed IT desks.
When there's a serious problem, I, for one, would like to have a fix sooner than later.
As Levy pointed out, "IE over the years has been integrating with many Windows subsystems. This gives hackers the ability to open the way to many vulnerabilities."
It's not that Firefox is perfectly safe.
"Mozilla has similar issues, but not the same with integration points. Its holes tend to be in the XML system that is used to create its graphical interface. It's been in these subsystems that hackers have been finding vulnerabilities," Levy said.
So, what does it all mean?
Well, first, nothing is safe. It's just that Firefox, from where I sit, tends to be safer than Internet Explorer.
You still have to patch your browser and you still have to be careful about what you do with it. It doesn't matter how up-to-date your browser is if you enter your credit card information into a bogus site.
Why do I think Firefox is better? Well, I'll let Mozilla's Beard tell you what he thinks.
"It's hard to draw conclusions around the security of a given Web browser by comparing the number of vulnerabilities publicly acknowledged by vendors during an arbitrary time frame. This type of evaluation doesn't take into account the number of unpatched vulnerabilities and the speed at which critical vulnerabilities are fixed."
"It's also important to note that most software vendors report vulnerabilities differently -- some group vulnerabilities together, while Mozilla reports on them separately and in deep detail as part of our open-source process," Beard said.
Faster fixes, open repairs, and more thorough reporting.
That sounds good to me. It should sound good to you.
If you found this eWEEK.com article by Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols informative, be sure to check out eWEEK.com's Linux & Open Source Center for the latest open-source news, reviews, and analysis.
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