Firefox in the top 12 most vulnerable apps list!

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Originally Posted by crunchie

Only been patched if it is actually installed :).

How does popularity equate to security?

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if i use a browser that only five people use, the risk of a security breach is rare even if there is a known hole. What are the chances that a website that has code in it to take advantage of my insecure browser is one that I will visit. Who would even want to take advantage of an exploit on a browser that five people use. Now if i use a browser that 5 million people use the risks are extremely higher since you have a better chance of gaining access via a hole. A pretty good percentage of those 5 million will most likely go to ebay or amazon.com

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Originally Posted by jdlenke

if i use a browser that only five people use, the risk of a security breach is rare even if there is a known hole. What are the chances that a website that has code in it to take advantage of my insecure browser is one that I will visit. Who would even want to take advantage of an exploit on a browser that five people use. Now if i use a browser that 5 million people use the risks are extremely higher since you have a better chance of gaining access via a hole. A pretty good percentage of those 5 million will most likely go to ebay or amazon.com

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Which by the way, is the same reason Linux and Apple are less virus prone.

Firefox 3 Release Notes

v3.0.5, released December 16, 2008

http://en-us.www.mozilla.com/en-US/f.../releasenotes/

MFSA 2008-69 XSS vulnerabilities in SessionStore
MFSA 2008-68 XSS and JavaScript privilege escalation
MFSA 2008-67 Escaped null characters ignored by CSS parser
MFSA 2008-66 Errors parsing URLs with leading whitespace and control characters
MFSA 2008-65 Cross-domain data theft via script redirect error message
MFSA 2008-64 XMLHttpRequest 302 response disclosure
MFSA 2008-63 User tracking via XUL persist attribute
MFSA 2008-60 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.0.5/1.8.1.19)

Looks like they had to fix the same thing.

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Originally Posted by SpywareDr

:) Didn't mean to step on any toes.

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Not mine. I wear steel capped boots :).

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Originally Posted by jdlenke

if i use a browser that only five people use, the risk of a security breach is rare even if there is a known hole. What are the chances that a website that has code in it to take advantage of my insecure browser is one that I will visit. Who would even want to take advantage of an exploit on a browser that five people use. Now if i use a browser that 5 million people use the risks are extremely higher since you have a better chance of gaining access via a hole. A pretty good percentage of those 5 million will most likely go to ebay or amazon.com

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That does not answer the question though. How does popularity make an application more or less, secure?
I understand what you are saying and agree that the more popular, the more it is targetted, but that in itself does not make an app less safe.

Other than the popularity bit, no reason why it would or would not be safer.

With over 100 different browsers available, my guess, use what you want to use.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers

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Originally Posted by crunchie

That does not answer the question though. How does popularity make an application more or less, secure?
I understand what you are saying and agree that the more popular, the more it is targetted, but that in itself does not make an app less safe.

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Popularity does not make something more or less secure. It's popularity simply exposes it's vulnerabilities.

interesting top.