According to two reports out from NSS Labs that tested the latest browsers: Safari 4, Firefox 3, Opera 10, Google Chrome 2, and Internet Explorer 8, there are some surprises as to which of them is the most secure. While I am sure many will rush in and say it has to be Firefox or Chrome the fact is they would be wrong. The winner in this case – IE8.

All the tests for the Malware Report and the Phishing Report were conducted on plain jane installs of the browsers – no add-on, plugins, or other such fancy stuff. The malware testing was done over 12 days (24 x 7) against fresh live malicious sites. For the phishing test it was conducted 24/7 for 14 days against active sites.

The comparative tests against malware broke down as such

malware1

The use of reputation systems to assist browsers in the fight against socially engineered malware is a strong use of cloud technologies. But, not all vendor implementations and daily operations yield the same results.

  • Internet Explorer 8 “was by far the best”, thanks to the SmartScreen® Filtertechnology
  • Firefox 3 “comes in a distant second”
  • Safari 4 presented a declined compared to the previous tests, with two short periods of sever security dips
  • Chrome 2 performed very consistently, albeit very poorly

Although Firefox, Safari and Chrome are using the same security API, the results are different. From the report:

“The SafeBrowsing products’ protection rates were showing signs of converging just under 25%. This supports the notion that there are operational differences between the implementations of the API, but that the block lists are the same (or very similar)”

Source: Giorgio Sardo Blog ::Most Secure Browser: Internet Explorer 8

When it came to the phishing tests the results came out as such

phishing1

  • Internet Explorer 8 and Firefox 3 are clearly responding quickly to block new phishing sites
  • Opera had a period during the tests where the protection dropped off significantly
  • Chrome was below average

From the report:

“We expected better results given the fanfare about Google’s SafeBrowsing initiative. Additionally, a third-party (Firefox) was able to utilize Google’s API to achieve significantly better protection that Google’s own browser.”

Source: Giorgio Sardo Blog ::Most Secure Browser: Internet Explorer 8

Let the chest beating and name calling commence :)


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