Viruses/Worms News

Internet Explorer 8 aces web browser security test

Friday, August 14, 2009

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) web browser outperformed Safari 4, Firefox 3, Chrome 2 and Opera 10 Beta in a Microsoft-sponsored security test by NSS labs.

The test measured the ability of the different web browsers to catch socially engineered malware attacks - where cybercriminals use web links to malicious sites featuring downloads of Trojan malware files disguised as applications such as video codecs.

In live testing over a two-week period in July, IE8 caught 81 percent of malware threats, 54 percent better than Firefox 3, the next best score, NSS Labs said in its report.

Firefox 3 caught 27 percent of live threats, the best among products utilizing the Google SafeBrowsing API. Apple's Safari 4 recognized just 21 percent of malware sites, Google Chrome just 7 percent and Opera only 1 percent.

Web browsers rely on in-the-cloud reputation software to decipher if a website URL hosts malicious content. However, not all browsers use the same techniques for determining which URLs are malicious.

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