1. I am tired of being nagged at for using IE because of lazy developers want to push the responsibility for their ineptitude onto users. When confronted with someone who can’t implement the decade old HTML 4 and CSS 2 standards, I use IE out of sheer spite.

2. Secondly, Firefox is what developers push and I really hate the Mozilla Foundation for being hypocrites. They complain about Microsoft’s upgrade treadmill, then needlessly discontinue support for platforms. Not porting new features, I can see, but ripping out support entirely? Last year it was Windows 9X, this week it was MacOS 10.4, next month it might be Vista (that came out in the stone ages).

Then they complain about Microsoft not following standards. Well, if Firefox turns its interpretation of standard upside down every version, what good are the standards? Pages I coded when Netscape 4 was the new kid on the block render the same in IE 4-8. Stuff I coded yesterday looks fine in FF2 but distorted in FF3. I don’t have this problem in Safari.

Finally, they’re always going on about Microsoft’s bloat. Firefox has _never_ loaded faster than IE. I still wait a minute or more for FF to load up. Safari is only slightly slower than IE, but it uses a different UI so I put up with it. I never feel like Safari or IE get in my way, like Firefox does when it hangs for no reason or struggles with simple tasks like showing a menu or changing cursor cues. This is with no plugins loaded either, which is another can of worms, because I’m sick of those needing to be updated with every microscopic revision.

3. As a developer, I’m comfortable with IE. because it doesn’t change for the sake of change and it doesn’t guilt me into doing so too. IE manages to render images, tables, and text just fine. If I needed more, I could always try Flash, but I haven’t had to lean on it or ActiveX. Programming is about solving problems and if you can’t do math without a Math class, then I don’t want you on my team. The only real danger with IE is with drive by security holes and those are eliminated almost entirely by not strolling through the internet’s slums – none of which reside on your corporate intranet.

“The point is, and I stated this earlier, but I’ll say it again since you missed it: Firefox IS THE ONE THAT CLAIMS that it is MORE secure! Firefox and its fanboys continually make that CLAIM about it, and go around bragging everywhere as if Firefox is perfect and does not have any security flaws. But in fact IT DOES!”

Wait a minute. Your problem is that some people, somewhere (not here) claim that Firefox is inviolate and perfect?

Have a quick refresher over the posts here which mention security. None of them claim perfect security, they mostly speculate, explicitly or implicitly, that it if is more secure than the dominant alternative (IE).

You have not yet demonstrated that this is untrue. In fact, the argument you have demolished is what is commonly referred to as a “straw man,” an argument which no one is making but which you are attacking nonetheless. If argument is with the statement “Firefox is perfect,” then: well done! Success! You have proven that it is not! Now accept that most people here already knew that.

“This blog is for people who DO NOT use Firefox, asking them their opinions on why they do NOT use it or why they do not want to use it. This blog was not for you who is already a Firefox user arguing whatever you can FOR firefox. This blog was for people who DONT use Firefox to say why. That is I, and that is what I did, and that is what I am doing. ”

“Because that is NOT the point of this blog post. This blog post does not ask anything about KING KONGQUEROR. Jordan, go scroll up and re-read the 1st post if you need to. It says “For those of you reading this in Internet Explorer, please leave a comment…” if you are in KONQUEEROR or FIREFOX Jordan, that’s not asking you for comments.”

Well done, you’ve asserted that someone who uses IE (which may include you, although you haven’t yet said that you do) may post a response. Now point to the bit where he said “please don’t post unless you use IE”.

If you want to know what the point of this blog post is, why not take Paul at his word?

“The point of this post is for me to find out why people still use Internet Explorer. As readers of this tech-related blog, you must know the joys of using a browser such as Firefox or Safari.”

Paul was honestly interested in finding out why people who know about Firefox and other alternative browsers would continue to use IE. Perhaps they don’t like tabbed browsing, or some other UI feature, or prefer to use a browser with native support for ActiveX? Maybe they know that most websites aim to support IE, because it’s the dominant browser, while many forget to even test in another browser? Paul Brunelle, so far, is the only poster here to have fulfilled that desire. The only other examples of dissent from the status quo I’ve seen so far are “Firefox has security bugs, shock horror!” and “IE is perfect [notice the choice of wording?] for my needs[.]”

So please, feel free to post something which actually compares IE to one ore more alternatives, instead of just bashing Firefox.

“Following that, in the call for posts, is a list of reasons why they *think* firefox is better, which I posted information on showing that those were not always true.”

Note, please, that these are reasons why people believe Firefox is better than IE. So far, you have presented the following:

* Firefox has bugs. Many bugs. Some of them aren’t fixed. (A point which you have expanded upon enormously.)
* Some spyware has been written to target Firefox.
* Other browsers have tabs extensions, too!
* Some sites don’t work in Firefox, but work in IE.

The first two points are meaningless in the context of comparing Firefox to IE without an objective comparison, and any objective comparison will surely take into account the fact that IE is far more heavily targetted than Firefox (something which you seem to be ignoring). The third point briefly touches on IE 7 having tabs and extensions too; it has tabs, I’ll give you that, but extensions? There are several at IE Add-Ons website, but is there any evidence that they will be as easy to write as Firefox extensions? Or that there will be nearly as many? (Considering the size of the Firefox development community, probably not.)

The fourth point actually does compare Firefox’s rendering with IE, so bully for you. Let’s go back to what you originally said:

“FALSE–> Firefox fully embraces web standards, renders sites properly and is offered for many operating systems at no cost.”

Exactly which bit is false?

Firefox fully embraces web standards: while it may not be perfect, it certainly embraces them. So it can’t be this bit.

Renders sites properly: It seems to do this pretty well. I’ll look at your counter-examples in a minute.

Is offered for many operating systems at no cost: I don’t see this being challenged.

So I can only guess it is the second clause alone you are questioning. Now, perhaps you could provide a few examples of sites with valid code which renders correctly in IE but not in Firefox? You don’t provide many examples:

* The Hebrew website is absolutely awful. The stylesheets are imported by Javascript, as apparently is much of the content. It uses more iframes, embedded objects and scripts than you can throw a script at. It’s not suprising to observe that it crashes and burns. The only actual Firefox rendering error I could see on the homepage was some text overlapping a header image above it, and I would be suprised if that wasn’t solely because of sloppy coding.

* When I press “back” in the eBay website, the scrollbar position is preserved on all but one category of pages. Unsuprisingly, turning off Javascript fixes the bug. This isn’t a Firefox only bug either; IE has the same problem.

* The BlueJet page is too far into the site. I went all the way to entering credit card details and still didn’t reach it, so there’s no way of confirming what went wrong.

All the rest of your gripes are cut and pasted completely out of context, so there is no way to verify them or determine the cause.

It is, however, very telling that almost every page which works with Firefox also works in Opera, even if IE has nasty bugs. Could this be because IE’s rules for rendering pages often have little to do with the specification? If we want to compare rendering bugs in IE with those in other browsers, we could at least start with valid code written according to available standards, a scenario in which IE quickly demonstrates its grave poverty in the arena of standards support.

To summarise: this is about why people use IE. If there are problems with Firefox, fine: everyone acknowledges this. So please demonstrate how these problems are any worse than those suffered by the browser in question.

Because that is NOT the point of this blog post. This blog post does not ask anything about KING KONGQUEROR. Jordan, go scroll up and re-read the 1st post if you need to. It says “For those of you reading this in Internet Explorer, please leave a comment…” if you are in KONQUEEROR or FIREFOX Jordan, that’s not asking you for comments.

Following that, in the call for posts, is a list of reasons why they *think* firefox is better, which I posted information on showing that those were not always true.

This is not a blogitem for you to just parrot the premise, and go along with the other kiddies in the clique, this is asking for opposing points of view, from people who DONT use firefox. Not you if you are already using firefox or konqueeror.

QUOTE: “I speak regexes like a second language?” Good. Then on your boxen there, grep for incoming from here with my nick and deliver it to your dev nul and go post in the “I Wuv FireFox” forum.

This is exactly *my* point, there IS no secure browser! And stop eliciting calls for suggestions of one that you know already doesn’t exist just so you can shoot down something. That is inane.

The point is, and I stated this earlier, but I’ll say it again since you missed it: Firefox IS THE ONE THAT CLAIMS that it is MORE secure! Firefox and its fanboys continually make that CLAIM about it, and go around bragging everywhere as if Firefox is perfect and does not have any security flaws. But in fact IT DOES! In fact, Firefox has PLENTY of vulnerabilities, Flaws, Denial of Service exploits, and yes it most certainly can get infected by spyware.

Go scroll up to the very 1st post in this entire thread, —> “Firefox is more secure than IE” you’ll see that repeated by little firefox parrots everywhere, on every forum by people who have never even investigated it, they just ‘think so because they heard that’ and they have never investigated trying to infect it themselves and saw that oh yes it does have security flaws, and sometimes MORE flaws than ie.

I don’t care if someone says, hey, it’s a new browser, we’re trying but we know we’re not perfect, and we have some flaws, but we’re doing the best we can…. THAT IS OK. But Firefox and a large part of the little lemmings following it blindly like the pied piper go around touting it over and over again and bragging about how secure it is, and when THAT is the case, it needs to be put in its place. And exposed and revealed that people should STOP bragging or saying anything about Firefox being so much more secure because it’s NOT. Every one of them has problems and vulnerabilities, it’s just that Firefox is the one going around falsely proclaiming itself like it’s so perfect. It’s not. And more and more people are now realizing the truth about Firefox.

Why not jsut be helpfull, ….”

I AM. In fact, I am being most helpful by revealing that if you use firefox, don’t be deluded into thinking you’re so safe, you’re NOT. You’re like that scene in “SCARY MOVIE” where the ghostface guy is hiding behind the couch with his butt sticking out up in the air thinking he’s safe and nobody sees him. When in fact, he is exposed. And I am being most helpful to all because now many people will benefit by being aware that they are not as perfectly safe as they thought by reading all your ‘firefox is so safe’ posts up there. The Emperor has no clothes. And going contrary to your comfy little world view there I’ll probably be targeted with a lot of crap or backlash for it, but sometimes someone has to be brave enough to say it. Firefox has FLAWS! And not just a few. A LOT. And if somebody tells you you should switch to it because it’s ’secure’ that person doesn’t know what they’re talking about.

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 06:12:09 +0100
milw0rm.com have released proof of concept code for a denial of service exploit which apparently affects all versions of the Mozilla Foundations popular Firefox…
…this exploit will indeed need patching as soon as possible – it does cause a nasty software loop/crash.

“According to the report, Firefox contained 25 confirmed vulnerabilities that were disclosed for the Mozilla browsers during the first half of 2005, “the most of any browser studied…”

The question up at the top in the 1st call for posts was this:

“For those of you reading this in Internet Explorer, please leave a comment and let me know why you prefer using Internet Explorer.
Here are a few reasons why I use Firefox instead of Internet Explorer on all of my computers.

-Firefox is resistant to spyware.
-It supports a massive number of extensions to allow for unique features and comes with tabs right out of the proverbial box.
-Firefox fully embraces web standards, renders sites properly and is offered for many operating systems at no cost.
-Firefox is more secure than IE and with an active development community any security issues that arise are quickly fixed.
”

The question at the top of this blog was NOT: “Franky says tell everyone a browser that is 100% perfectly secure.”

This blog is for people who DO NOT use Firefox, asking them their opinions on why they do NOT use it or why they do not want to use it. This blog was not for you who is already a Firefox user arguing whatever you can FOR firefox. This blog was for people who DONT use Firefox to say why. That is I, and that is what I did, and that is what I am doing.

And following that question were a bunch of statements about how Firefox is so secure and resistant to spyware and a bunch of other stuff, and I showed that in fact, it is Not that secure, and it DOES have spyware targeting it. This blog is not for people already agreeing, and already using firefox to post “yeah. that’s right. I agree. Yeah. me too! me too!” posts. It’s for people NOT using it, and asking them why. And I showed exactly why Firefox isn’t up to what everybody thinks it is. Sorry if your superior-to-all-browsers Firefox turns out to have flaws in it and you’ve nothing to bow down in front of now. Guess you’ll just need to deal with it. It’s not what you thought it was afterall.

Why not jsut be helpfull, which would be your task if you consider yourself a security specialist.

Are you sure this wasn’t Katie Price’s new autobiography, “Being Jordan”?

“Amazon. 99cents.”

That sounds about right. Certainly not a book about programming, because 99 cents won’t even get you a “Quick Reference” guide. Nor…

“full fee for Jordan’s consulting expertise: .99c/hr.”

…would it get you one minute of my time.

“Jordan, I know 17 programming languages, C++, C, fortran, pascal, PL/I, APL, BASIC, COBOL, coldfusion, asp, .net, CSS, HTML, javascript, php, XML, DHTML, etc. but thanks.”

CSS, HTML, XML and DHTML are not programming languages. And how precisely do you distinguish DHTML from Javascript? Regardless, knowledge of 1001+ programming languages is not difficult to claim on the internet, and totally irrelevent to this subject. Don’t expect anyone to fall for argumentum ad vericundiam.

“And it’s a board that ASKS for and solicits post requests,”

So why don’t you submit something like “Firefox is less secure relative to Konqueror because of problems like X” instead of “Firefox has problems like X, which proves absolutely nothing relative to a benchmark I haven’t even presented”?

“…so if you won’t listen, don’t want to read, won’t recognize, etc.. then learn to program mail rules in your email program to process your incoming messages by using regexp’s and file them in your own roundfile on your pc accordingly.”

That’s completely ex cathedra. Is this anything more than an extension to your appeal to authority? You do know that like any Perl programmer with a jot of experience, I speak regexes like a second language? And I would be suprised if anyone here couldn’t set up procmail!

Hey Paul, sorry if I’m being an ass. I’ll try not to derail your blog any further on this line of enquiry.

I challenge you.
But otherwise, there will never be a secure browser. Unless you cut the wire between the modem and the wall and only use your browser to access local host or open files. And even then.
Opera? As far as I am aware of every minor upgrade Opera made was due to secunia advisories and even the last 8.5x version has an unpatched vulnerability.
Hacking techniques evolve together with new code used in software. New code means new hacking tricks. The Mozilla foundation has as aim to patch every (severe) vulnerability within 48 hours. Opera tries to do the same, but averagely needs some more hours (last severe vulnerabilities in FF have been patched averagely in less than 16 hours, and besides that FF has an auto-update function)

IE… ok, no comment. Safari, still not popular enough to be considered an important browser (same for the whole Apple platform). Point me to a decent (cross platform, and surely Windows compatible since most people still use Windows) browser and I’ll respect you.
So far you haven’t revealed anything new or even relevant in your comments here.

It supports a massive number of extensions to allow for unique features and comes with tabs right out of the proverbial box.
AND? So do many browsers. Even IE7. 20 or 30 BROWSERS have this now, and had it before Firefox did. This is not new. *shrug* This is like saying a car has “bucket seats”. ok. that’s fine. so.

FALSE–> Firefox fully embraces web standards, renders sites properly and is offered for many operating systems at no cost.
- ” website displays randomly incorrectly with firefox
If one goes to the gallery using firefox thumbnails … display wrongly.
Followup: “I searched on google and I found people with a similar problem. I have yet not fount any fix for this.”

- “I’ve recently converted to Firefox and I’m finding that many pages display incorrectly. I have a widescreen Dell with 1900×1200 which could be adding to the problem. Most commonly issues are text overwriting other text, frames displaying incorrectly, buttons not visible or not working, bottom frame not staying anchored and scrolling with page”

-”After installing Firefox 1.5 I noticed that Hebrew web pages such as http://www.haaretz.co.il display incorrectly.”

-”I’ve recently been informed that my website does not display correctly in Firefox servers. It works perfectly fine for IE users. ”

-”I’m wanted to use the splitter control in my page. It is a collapsible splitter control. But in firefox it does something weird when you collapse and expand it more than twice without taking a different action on the page.
The pane that is being expanded display next to the splitter control or beneath it. ComponentArt.Web.UI.Samples/splitter/features/expand_collapsePanes/WebForm1.aspx That page has this behaviour as well. I’m using firefox …”

-”I’m having some issues with Firefox. I’ve got a small header on my corporate forums, and it shows up perfectly in Internet Explorer, but renders incorrectly in Firefox.”

-”[# 026] Fuzzy match on Mozilla Firefox window title causes script failure”

-”a functional difference will be immediately apparent the first time you view a web page with Firefox on a new site. Perhaps, for example, the navigation menus won’t work. Then too, I ran across a web site where you had to click on a button to start a paid transaction. Clicking the button in Firefox did nothing. No big deal, just switch to IE. In the worst case however, you will be halfway through doing something and find out you can’t finish it. This happened to me at the web site of Jet Blue where, while in the middle of purchasing tickets, I found out that Firefox was not able to click on the plane picture to select my seats.”

-”Firefox Back button does not restore scroll position on eBay.”

-”Printing from FIREFOX sometimes causes squished images on second page; replicates images on first page.”

etc etc.

FALSE!–> Firefox is more secure than IE – No. Firefox is not. Firefox contains multiple security flaws.

Firefox 1.5.0.7
MFSA 2006-64 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.0.7)
MFSA 2006-62 Popup-blocker cross-site scripting (XSS)
MFSA 2006-61 Frame spoofing using document.open()
MFSA 2006-60 RSA Signature Forgery
MFSA 2006-59 Concurrency-related vulnerability
MFSA 2006-58 Auto-Update compromise through DNS and SSL spoofing
MFSA 2006-57 JavaScript Regular Expression Heap Corruption

Firefox 1.5.0.5
MFSA 2006-56 chrome: scheme loading remote content
MFSA 2006-55 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.0.5)
MFSA 2006-54 XSS with XPCNativeWrapper(window).Function(…)
MFSA 2006-53 UniversalBrowserRead privilege escalation
MFSA 2006-52 PAC privilege escalation using Function.prototype.call
MFSA 2006-51 Privilege escalation using named-functions and redefined “new Object()”
MFSA 2006-50 JavaScript engine vulnerabilities
MFSA 2006-48 JavaScript new Function race condition
MFSA 2006-47 Native DOM methods can be hijacked across domains
MFSA 2006-46 Memory corruption with simultaneous events
MFSA 2006-45 Javascript navigator Object Vulnerability
MFSA 2006-44 Code execution through deleted frame reference

Firefox 1.5.0.4
MFSA 2006-43 Privilege escalation using addSelectionListener
MFSA 2006-42 Web site XSS using BOM on UTF-8 pages
MFSA 2006-41 File stealing by changing input type (variant)
MFSA 2006-39 “View Image” local resource linking (Windows)
MFSA 2006-38 Buffer overflow in crypto.signText()
MFSA 2006-37 Remote compromise via content-defined setter on object prototypes
MFSA 2006-36 PLUGINSPAGE privileged JavaScript execution 2
MFSA 2006-35 Privilege escalation through XUL persist
MFSA 2006-34 XSS viewing javascript: frames or images from context menu
MFSA 2006-33 HTTP response smuggling
MFSA 2006-32 Fixes for crashes with potential memory corruption (rv:1.8.0.4)
MFSA 2006-31 EvalInSandbox escape (Proxy Autoconfig, Greasemonkey)

Firefox 1.5.0.3
MFSA 2006-30 Deleted object reference when designMode=”on”

Firefox 1.5.0.2
MFSA 2006-29 Spoofing with translucent windows
MFSA 2006-28 Security check of js_ValueToFunctionObject() can be circumvented
MFSA 2006-27 Table Rebuilding Code Execution Vulnerability
MFSA 2006-25 Privilege escalation through Print Preview
MFSA 2006-24 Privilege escalation using crypto.generateCRMFRequest
MFSA 2006-23 File stealing by changing input type
MFSA 2006-22 CSS Letter-Spacing Heap Overflow Vulnerability
MFSA 2006-20 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.0.2)

Firefox 1.5.0.1
MFSA 2006-08 “AnyName” entrainment and access control hazard
MFSA 2006-07 Read beyond buffer while parsing XML
MFSA 2006-06 Integer overflows in E4X, SVG and Canvas
MFSA 2006-05 Localstore.rdf XML injection through XULDocument.persist()
MFSA 2006-04 Memory corruption via QueryInterface on Location, Navigator objects
MFSA 2006-03 Long document title causes startup denial of Service
MFSA 2006-02 Changing postion:relative to static corrupts memory
MFSA 2006-01 JavaScript garbage-collection hazards

Firefox 1.5
MFSA 2006-19 Cross-site scripting using .valueOf.call()
MFSA 2006-18 Mozilla Firefox Tag Order Vulnerability
MFSA 2006-17 cross-site scripting through window.controllers
MFSA 2006-16 Accessing XBL compilation scope via valueOf.call()
MFSA 2006-15 Privilege escalation using a JavaScript function’s cloned parent
MFSA 2006-14 Privilege escalation via XBL.method.eval
MFSA 2006-13 Downloading executables with “Save Image As…”
MFSA 2006-12 Secure-site spoof (requires security warning dialog)
MFSA 2006-11 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8)
MFSA 2006-10 JavaScript garbage-collection hazard audit
MFSA 2006-09 Cross-site JavaScript injection using event handlers

“I’ve had a problem appear on my Mozilla Tbird about a week ago and visiting the Mozilla Thunderbird Forum it seems so did quite a few other people. But there is deathly silence from the developer community about what it is and how to fix it.”

But as always, you’ll find a lot of people who will just believe things, including all these firefox myths. Just look at how many ‘upstanding’ people well believe in astrology and will check their horoscope for venus rising before they buy their stocks. And there’s probably little you can say to them, they’ll go on & on despite all evidence plainly shown to them and remain in the self-fulfilling prophecy of believing that their rising cusp makes it a safe day. “Mars in the ecliptic made me safe and protected me! –umm, but you got hit by a car and broke your leg. –YES! BUT THINK OF what WOULD have happened if my planet WASNT in the ecliptic!” uh. huh.

Sheesh, we get it. Vulnerabilities exist for Firefox! It’s obviously worse than IE, which also has vulnerabilities (which, generally, are not fixed so quickly). Nothing to do with the fact that one browser hasn’t been updated for FIVE YEARS, and even then can barely cope with many of the things that web developers wanted to do at that time.

Here’s a suggestion to you, John: perhaps you should pick up a book (any good one will do) about web page design, especially one focussed on markup and CSS. You’ll quickly find a common theme: “IE can’t do…,” “IE doesn’t support…,” “IE won’t recognise…” Not very long ago I read a great CSS book which posted an IE fix about every three pages, on average.

Most people here are interested in using browsers which support *standards* and *things people would like to do on the internet* than how many articles you can find detailing a handful of security issues.

Oh, and one final point: while, in academic terms, a given installation of Firefox may have as many exploits as a given installation of IE, it remains that in real world terms, it is more secure because it is not as broadly targetted by spyware and exploits. This will change as it becomes more popular, but saying that “one day it might become just as insecure” isn’t an argument for throwing caution to the wind.

no? ok, go do that.

And the point is if someone doesn’t claim they are so great at security and has some flaws, fine. But if somebody goes around making all kinds of claims that their browser is so secure, and it’s so great because it supposedly isn’t vulnerable to flaws and security breaches and popups and spyware, and THEN that braggart is found to be succeptible just like everyone else, then eat crow.

Firefox and fans brag a lot, and the truth is, it has just the same or more security flaws, exploits, spywar, hijacks, and sketchy questionable code as anybody else. So if you don’t know this, then you are not a security expert equipped with thorough and even knowledge, but rather a fanboy of a particular program who jumped on a bandwagon because it was faddish or seemed like the thing to do and rebel against some other thing without investigating it. Rebel without a clue. Take some classes in security exploits and write some routines first, and actually test out some of these things 1st.

If some average normal guy comes and says, hey, I’m not perfect, but I’m trying, I got a few problems I know, but I’ll try to work on those the best I can (ie), then some arrogant braggart comes up (firefox) and says Ha ha, you suck! I’m so much better than you. I don’t have any flaws, I’m perfect! Look at yourself, you poor excuse for a browser. Come on everybody, persecute that other guy and don’t even be friends with him, he’s a loser and he sucks and I’m the BEST! …. Then we find out that bragging boaster has just the same flaws as everybody. The Firefox balloon is popped. It has been exposed and revealed that it has just as many, and at times even MORE flaws than other browsers.

And by the way, there are more browsers than firefox and IE you know. So don’t automatically think that if someone is not using firefox, that they are using InternetExplorer. There are over 40+ web browsers available. If you don’t know this, then do some homework.

If someone says the Food at McDonalds is not very good, then don’t just assume they like to eat Burger King. No, there’s Thai, Italian food, wine, and Fine Dining, man. Don’t ping-pong between 2 greasy feedbags. Think outside the catbox.

and once again, ALL versions of Firefox are affected. Current, and throughout its history:

Small example of some of the flaws in Mozilla FIREFOX:
and a couple from Safari thrown in.
So don’t make claims of any such thing that Firefox is secure. It’s not.

2006-07-28 Mozilla Firefox

SECURITY FLAWS in FIREFOX:

2006-07-28 Mozilla Firefox

Clicking the button below may crash your browser!

There’s your Firefox version 1.5.x, friend.
enjoy.

When Microsoft fixes problems, the public generally doesn’t know about them. For Firefox, the nature of the process means that we know what gets fixed.

Critics of the open-source Firefox browser took its security track record to task this week after a biannual Internet security report noted that the application had almost twice as many vulnerabilities as Internet Explorer in the first half of 2005, with a higher fraction of those flaws being severe.

“Mozilla’s popularity has gone from almost zero to double digits, so they have had to deal with a lot of sudden attention,” said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer for antivirus firm F-Secure. “Since Mozilla has become popular, people have been looking for more vulnerabilities.”

And researchers appear to be finding flaws with greater frequency. In the first six months of 2005, the Mozilla family of browsers had 25 vulnerabilities, with 72 per cent rated as high severity, according to the Internet Security Threat Report released by Symantec this week. During the same period, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had 13…

Firefox 1 has problems, they try to fix it in 1.1, Firefox 1.1 has problems, they try to fix it in 1.2, 1.2 has new errors they try to fix in 1.3, 1.3 has flaws they patch in 1.4.

It makes no difference what version you have of Firefox, this is just typical of the entire history of every version of firefox introducing more and more problems and security flaws that need to be patched over and over again.

Maybe take a few classes on version control and cvs and some classes in Security and Encryption first, and then you’ll get the idea.

*** Linux users warned over Firefox flaw ***
Shell shock
By John Leyden
Published Wednesday 21st September 2005 11:45 GMT
Get breaking Security news s
Security researchers have discovered a new vulnerability with Firefox that might allow hackers to seize control of Unix or Linux machines running vulnerable versions of the popular alternative browser software. The vulnerability can only be exploited on Unix or Linux based environments. Firefox users at risk are advised to upgrade to version 1.0.7 to guard against attack.

The security bug creates a means for hackers to execute arbitrary shell commands providing they trick users into following a malicious link in an external application which uses Firefox as the default browser, such as the Evolution email client on various versions of Red Hat Linux. The vulnerability has been confirmed in version 1.0.6 of Firefox on Fedora Core 4 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Other versions and platforms may also be affected, security notification firm Secunia warns, however there’s no evidence that the security bug is being actively exploited. The flaw, such as it is, was unearthed by security researcher Peter Zelezny. ®

Internet security report noted that the FIREFOX had almost twice as many vulnerabilities as Internet Explorer in the first half of 2005, with a higher fraction of those flaws being severe.

“There’s a small army of rogue programmers that are tearing Firefox apart,” he said.

“It all boils down to user education. People can install applications with variable amounts of effort from all browsers

CTO of ScanSafe, said that some users migrated away from IE to alternative browsers such as Firefox after various security *scares* last year. He cited figures from Secunia that Firefox and IE were both subject to five advisories in the first two months of this year to support his argument that Firefox was not “bullet-proof”.”

and it turns out that Firefox has flaws. lol. just as many as IE, which has been around longer and is v6.x, and firefox is only 1.0 haha.

yes, I’d rag on Mozilla if it weren’t a bunch of teens in their bedrooms. lol.

Yep. and you could have Firefox claiming it’s so safe, but with flaws already. hehehe.
Screenshot of Firefox Spoof EXPLOIT –> http://www.nd.edu/~jsmith30/xul/test/ssht.png
Here’s another one: “Mozilla Patches New Firefox Flaw”
March 24th, 2005
“The Mozilla Foundation has released a new security patch for its Firefox internet browser and is urging users to install it. ”
“If a hacker embedded malicious code in an image it could conceivably enter a PC through the browser”
“The flaw came to light after work done by security researchers at Internet Security Systems”

[000:12] Jester check out this http://xaa.tripod.com/whyfirefox.htm

Updated: The Mozilla Foundation has confirmed findings that its Mozilla and Firefox browsers are vulnerable to attacks

“Security researchers are reporting another security issue in Web browsing under Windows, but this time Internet Explorer is not the culprit. The Mozilla Foundation’s Mozilla and Firefox are reported as vulnerable. ”

The reports indicate that links in a Web page using the “shell:” scheme can execute arbitrary programs on the user’s system.

‘Extremely Critical’ Bugs Found In Firefox”
A pair of unpatched vulnerabilities in Mozilla’s Firefox browser could allow an attacker to take control of a PC simply by getting a user to visit a malicious Web site, Mozilla says.

2005-12-12 Mozilla Firefox

Firefox buffer overflow injection, spyware that specifically attacks Firefox, even linux version of firefox has now introduced ways for hackers to exploit previously resistant linux now.

Firefox is a sad browser. Not ony that, but severely dangerous. Yes, everyone knows now to Avoid firefox.

What I think is all IE, Firefox, Opera or even Netscape and some other based-on-IE browsers are just… browsers, you know. And what Firefox and Opera differs from IE is they have tons of ways for you to customize them, and improved w3c support, better security…

I tried Opera too, but it’s years after I used Firefox, with many extensions on it already. And I do think if I switched to Opera instead of Firefox on that day, I won’t switch to Firefox too.

Anyways, I would like to point out to all the people here that no browser is completely safe from anything. I hate people that say Opera is the safest browser out there, its still vulnerable to virus’s and spyware. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter what browser you use and you should use what you prefer.

Of course when the issue arrises, I recomend firefox to people =-)

He has used several excuses to justify using it:

1. “I’m a minimalist—I don’t like to install additional software, especially not when IE integrates so deeply with Windows.”

2. “Why bother? IE does everything I want.”

3. “Some websites don’t work with Firefox. _Everything_ works with IE.”

As for me, I have my own reasons *not* to use IE. For example, I’m a minimalist as well. So when I got an email from someone (admittedly just a recruiter) from the MoD who had been infected with a trojan spread by—you’ve guessed it—IE and Outlook’s native insecurities, I decided that much I prefer my computer to be malware-optional.

Earlier comments point out something which I consider to be the number one reason why people use IE (although certainly not on this site): ignorance. I’m currently on a gap-year, working for a web-design company and ISP, and occasionally we get technical support calls from our customers demonstrating an astonishing degree of reliance and technical inexperience. Only today, we received a call from a woman who claimed that Outlook was “gone”. When pressed, she revealed that Outlook simply had disappeared from her start-menu’s list of recently-used programs, though it was readily available from the “Programs” submenu. This alone was disorienting enough for her that she had to call us on a premium-rate support line for assistance.

One thing I notice is that, as a professional courtesy, most web-developers are unanimous that Firefox is better because of its superior CSS and standards support. This is all well and good, but remember that web professionals exist in a relatively rarified field of expertise, and most consumers are unlikely to appreciate an argument which hangs on how many additional man-hours we spend tortuously hacking our gorgeous code for their browser, nor do they particularly care about the W3C when they just want to arrange an account transfer.

If there’s one consensus I think we can reach from this thread, I think it’s this: IE is seldom the browser of choice (David Brunelle graciously excepted), but generally the browser by default: either because it came with the system (and works!), or because schools or workplaces suppress the alternatives. Perhaps more people (although certainly not web developers) will join Brunelle once IE 7 comes out of beta.

Its light years ahead of any free browser available……Mouse guestures, Voice inputs…built in RSS reader apart from a whole load of features that can put any other browser to shame….

Talking about security….guess u havent taken a look at Secunia or the Symantec report which says Firefox has had more Security hacks than even IE for the year 2005…..

what say?????