After reading an article about Firefox and how it is, apparently, no more secure than Internet Explorer I realised how close Microsoft actually are to being superceded by Open Source alternatives to their software.
Firstly the article tries to debunk the claim that Firefox is impregnable and hack-proof. Now, I don’t believe that I’m omnipotent and I also don’t believe that I’ve read every article about Firefox, but I read a lot of news and technology sites every day and I’ve not seen one claim that Firefox is impregnable or anything like it. The only claim I’ve ever seen is that it’s more secure than Internet Explorer, and to be honest that’s not necessarily a massive achievement.
The other thing that stood out miles about this article, besides the obviously rediculous use of facts and figures, was the following quote:
“If you can exploit hundreds of millions of machines running Internet Explorer, why go after the 10 per cent of people who are running Firefox? If I want to do a massive hack, I want people with a similar operating system,” he said. “And I’m not being paid by Microsoft to say that.”
The fact that he had to say that he wasn’t getting paid for it just shows how rare such a comment is without some sort of prodding from MS. This comment is also coming from an employee at a firm who’s servers are Windows Server 2003/IIS 6.0 based based and who’s certifications and solutions seem to be mainly Microsoft oriented.
I’d just like to say that I work with Firefox on my machine at work and love it. My colleagues all use IE and I am constantly having to rid their machines of spyware and malware. Hopefully I’ll be migrating the whole company to Firefox soon and then I’ll see how much it cuts down my support calls. I’m guessing it’ll be time for me to buy a good book.