From the ‘Read The Fine Print‘ files:
A new Microsoft-sponsored study from NSS Labs is out with a finding that IE 8 is the most secure browser, when it comes to catching, socially engineered malware. The study however did not look at the security of the browser or related plug-ins (like Flash).
What is socially engineered malware?
According to the NSS report, they defined a socially engineered malware URL as, “a web page link that directly leads to a
‘download’ that delivers a malicious payload whose content type would
lead to execution.”
So for that type of scenario, NSS reported that IE 8 caught 81 percent of all threats. In contrast, Firefox 3 (they did their test prior to the final Firefox 3.5 release) only caught 27 percent while Google Chrome 2 caught 7 percent.
The interesting part of the Firefox 3 to Chrome 2 comparison, in my opinion, is the fact that both Firefox and Chrome use Google’s SafeBrowsing API. Firefox has been using Google’s API since the Firefox 2 release. In 2006, a Mozilla-sponsored study found that Firefox 2 was superior at catching phishing sites. Another 2006 study, sponsored by Microsoft found that IE 7 had the best anti-phishing filter.
So what’s my point?