Browsers vulnerability study by Cenzic

18th November, 2009 by Adina
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A Cenzic study reveals that Mozilla’s Firefox is much more vulnerable to attacks from the web than any rival is. Out of 3,100 attacks monitored by the researchers, 44 percent were successful, while in the case of Internet Explorer, ranked third, only 15 percent would succeed. Another vulnerable browser is Apple’s Safari, notably closer to Firefox, with 35 percent successful attacks that could affect the platform. The Opera browser is significantly much safer, with only six percent of the attacks affecting the platform.

A great part of the attacks affecting the Apple’s Safari is due to the mobile Safari browser on the iPod Touch and iPhone.

SQL injections were the most common with 25 percent, followed by cross-site scripting with 17 percent, phishing at 14 percent and rogue web servers at 12 percent.

Open-source fans always claimed that Firefox should be more secure because many application authors have real difficulties in finding and solving bugs, while others are unaware of applications. Internet Explorer received criticism in the past for Active X-like tools that were often offering websites direct access to PCs. Since then, much vulnerability was solved through the browser or through patches in Windows.

Out of the total reported vulnerabilities, 78 percent affected web technologies, such as web servers, web browsers, applications, ActiveX and plug-ins, which reflects a significant increase from the beginning of this year.

Based on the vulnerabilities Cenzic found using its ClickToSecure managed service, leaks of information, XSS, authentication/authorization and session management flaws continue to be in the top. The majority of assessments Cenzic completed highlighted the continuing exposure and risk faced by organizations.


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