Tired of IE’s vulnerabilities?
You could switch to Firefox, but if you were honest, you’d have to admit that you still can’t declare yourself secure. Or you could try Opera, but then you’d have to manage critical patches also, though perhaps less frequently. There is nothing about Chrome or Safari that indicates that using them will make you secure. They may have fewer vulnerabilities, or it may be that fewer of their vulnerabilities have been discovered and published. You may be more vulnerable or less vulnerable by switching browsers, but you will still be vulnerable. Throw in cross platform vulnerabilities and the combined vulnerabilities of the various third party browser addons & the menu looks pretty bleak.
Frankly, as the threats from the Internet have evolved over the last decade or so, I’ve not seen a huge difference between the security profiles of the various browsers. Some have fewer vulnerabilities, some have more; some have an easier selection of somewhat more secure browsing modes, others are more difficult to configure reasonably securely. None, as far as I can tell, are bug free, hardened, or easily configurable in a manner that is sufficiently secure such that ordinary users can fearlessly browse the Internet. There are differences between the browsers, and I have a strong preference for one browser, but fundamentally the choices are only that of relative security, not absolute security. The most popular browser likely has the most problems, but it also is the biggest target. When or if a less used browser that currently appears to be more secure ends up the most widely distributed browser, it’s pretty safe to assume that it will be targeted and it will get hit, and the results will be more or less the same.
Even if you could build a perfectly secure browser, you still have the infamous simian keyboard-chair interface that will routinely click on the banner ad that installs malicious fake ‘security’ software or stumble upon widely distributed malicious content. I don’t think it is possible to secure that particular interface using current technology.
My conclusion is simple:
If it can browse the Internet, it cannot be secured.Start with that premise. The security model that you begin to derive is significantly different than where we are today.
