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Holtz Communications + Technology

Shel Holtz
Communicating at the Intersection of Business and Technology
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Firefox, buzz marketing, and truth

Firefox, the Mozilla-sponsored alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer web browser—is the beneficiary of some of the strongest buzz marketing ever seen. Fans of the product even ponied up enough contributions to take out full-page newspaper ads touting the product. There are a lot of reasons to love Firefox—I use it myself almost exclusively—but the primary benefit noted everywhere is that it’s safe from the hackers who continue to exploit IE’s weaknesses.

According to an article by ZDNet’s George Ou, the claim is a house of cards. Ou tallied the number of vulnerabilities identified in each browser between March and September, and the results are surprising: There were 40 vulnerabilities in Firefox compared to only 10 in IE. Firefox didn’t fare much better in a tally of recent published exploits: 11 for Firefox compared to six for IE.

It just goes to prove that any popular software worth hacking that has security vulnerabilities will eventually have to deal with live working exploits.  Firefox mostly managed to stay under the radar from hackers before April of 2005.  Since that time, new exploits are being released almost on a monthly basis.

Despite the facts, many continue to push Firefox based on its supposed security benefits over IE. Even Todd Cochrane, host of the Geek News Central blog and podcast, routinely exhorts his readers/listeners to make the switch in order to better protect their PCs. One lesson to learn from this is that buzz marketing, while powerful and effective, can be just as deceptive as traditional marketing.

But I’ll continue to use Firefox for now anyway, mainly because I love tabbed browsing. When IE7 is released, though, Firefox may become a thing of the past for me.

10/05/05 | 11 Comments | Firefox, buzz marketing, and truth

Comments

  • 1.Depending on how you measure things, the results can of course be tweaked.

    If you look at Secunia's reports on Firefox and IE you'll find that Firefox have three of 22 advisories unpatched where IE has 19 of 85 unpatched.
    Firefox has had 0% (of 22) extremely critcal vulnerabilities and IE 14% (of 69). The share of highly critical vulnerabilites were 23% vs 29%.
    However the numbers are crunched, a browser that has been patched for five years as IE has been, should not behave like this any longer which makes Firefox a much more secure browser in any case.

    Patrick | September 2005 | Stockholm, Sweden

  • 2.Another Firefox fan here.

    Firefox is more secure, at least in part, because it's a smaller target. Fewer people use it, hence hackers target it less often.

    This alone is a valid reason to use it. Plus I like the user interface better than IE

    Ted Demopoulos | September 2005 | New Hampshire

  • 3.Does that mean that if Firefox becomes as popular as IE it will also become less secure? I suggest Holtz to try Opera Browser, another very fast and secure browser, totally free as of yesterday.

    The main problem for IE was that Microsoft wasn't all that worried about securing it, since there was basically no competition. With the increase popularity of Firefox, Microsoft is waking up.

    John | September 2005 | Shanghai

  • 4.Firefox at certain times has more bugs published than IE, but every security type bug found is listed pretty much, where as with IE, many many are not, hidden, and not even found yet.

    Also, all security bugs in IE are far more serious and unpatched, whilst Firefox ones are far less serious, and patched far quicker.

    Please research what your saying before writing such a misleading article.

    Thankyou.

    Kris Silver | September 2005

  • 5.http://nanobox.chipx86.com/security_summary.php

    Seriously, anyone who claims that Firefox is no better than Internet Explorer clearly doesn't have their facts straight. "Oh my gosh, Firefox had more new reported vulnerabilities in the last hour than Internet Explorer (one to zero, if you time it just right), so Firefox MUST be worse." According to Secunia's data, even if Firefox never fixed a SINGLE one of its vulnerabilities, Internet Explorer would STILL have more unfixed. Then compare how long it takes them to fix the vulnerabilities, and there's really no question that IE is the worst there is.

    David Hammond | September 2005 | California

  • 6.Pleas do a bit more research before posting such gibberish.
    I can personally testify that since running Fx since March 2005, with NO spyware blocking software, my PC is a clean as the pope. When I used IE exclusively, I had to clean my PC once a week, if not more. Thus, Fx is much more secure and stable plus it adheres to W3C HTML standards whereas IE does not.

    FoxRox | September 2005 | USA

  • 7.Shel,

    Bizarre. I wrote a lengthy reply, previewed it, and then submitted it... and then didn't have it appear. I wondered if you were moderating, but I didn't think you were. Perhaps something happened with my browser. Strange.

    Anyway, the point I was going to make was that with Firefox there is far greater transparency in what issues are found - and what the fixes are. Heck, you can easily get all the Firefox source code online, including the nightly builds via CVS (version control system). When security issues are found with FF, they are usually fixed immediately and those changes can be seen in the source code.

    In contrast, with MSIE we have no idea how many issues are outstanding nor do we know what gets "fixed" in an update. If you would like to be scared, visit eEye's list of upcoming security advisories and note that most of the Microsoft ones involve MSIE. Also note how long ago they reported some of these issues to Microsoft. Now, this is only one security research firm. It is issues like this that cause me to continue to be concerned about the security of MSIE.

    I'll take the open transparency of FF any day.

    My 2 cents,
    Dan

    Dan York | September 2005 | Burlington, VT, USA

  • 8.Reasons why you are just plain wrong:

    -- Check your facts, and your source: the relevant pages on Secunia for Firefox (http://secunia.com/product/4227/) and IE (http://secunia.com/product/11/), show that a fully patched Firefox is rated in the green ("Less Critical", a "2" on a scale of 1-5 (http://secunia.com/about_secunia_advisories/), 5 being the worst) while a fully patched IE is STILL rated in the RED ("Highly critical", "4" on the same 1-5 scale).

    -- 19 out of 85 Secunia advisories for IE are marked as "Unpatched", while only 3 out of 23 Secunia advisories for Fx have the same status.

    -- IE6 is almost FIVE YEARS OLD now. And people are still finding security faults.

    -- Mozilla have fixed all critical security issues within a fortnight of their being listed, while Microsoft are still struggling to address bugs & leaks from years gone by.

    -- IE is completely intertwined with the Microsoft Windows operating syste (any flavour. For example, it provides the UI for Windows Explorer & the Control Panel, to name just one alternate role) such that issues with IE can allow direct access to the operating system for hackers.

    -- There are soooo many more good points about Firefox than just its far better security features than IE. The security "issue" is just one small reason why people are trumpeting the benefits of Firefox. IE simply cannot match Firefox in other (read: "any other") areas. Extensibility, customisation, speed & autonomy are just a few of such factors.

    -- The facts speak for themselves. I have NEVER had a virus, nor a piece of spyware/adware/trojan or other on my computer! Not a one. I have also never used IE (except when site testing), and have never used Outlook as my default email client. Related? Absolutely.

    The above is snipped from my own blog post about your words here (and the matching article at WebProNews.com) - read it in its entirety: http://miinx.blogspot.com/2005/09/webpronewscom-absolute-no-idea-about.html

    And a little extra about your opening line... you say:

    Firefox, the Mozilla-sponsored alternative to Microsoft?s Internet Explorer web browser?is the beneficiary of some of the strongest buzz marketing ever seen.


    This is possibly the most incorrect of all your arguments. Why? Because Firefox is creating the buzz. Not the other way around.



    webgirl | September 2005 | Melbourne, Aus.

  • 9.I was going to post this as a trackback but alas the ping was shot down. The link above carries my response but basically, the statistic is misleading. I don't think anyone ever claimed that Firefox was bug-free but in the long run and even today it's still a much better option for security than IE. Feel free to click on the link and it will explain my thoughts.

    James Bly | September 2005

  • 10.One more time with the correct link.

    James Bly | September 2005

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