Microsoft is doing what it can to gin up enthusiasm for the next iteration of its Internet Explorer browser, touting a study that analyzed the ability of Internet Explorer 9 and other browsers to fend off socially engineered malware. IE 9, still in beta, led the pack with a 99 percent success rate, ahead of version 8, which guarded against 90 percent of those types of attacks.
Those results are leaps and bounds ahead of rival browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera, an edge Microsoft attributes to its SmartScreen URL filtering technology.
But there’s a catch. Not only was the study sponsored by Microsoft, but it also did not evaluate vulnerabilities in plug-ins or in the browser itself, which rival Google was quick to point out makes it an incomplete assessment of browser security. eSecurity Planet takes a look.
It’s not even out of beta yet, but Microsoft is touting test results that show Internet Explorer 9 (IE 9) blocks socially-engineered malware significantly better than any other browser, including IE 8.
However, Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) claims have also come under attack from at least one competitor who says the tests didn’t measure many other security areas such as blocking vulnerabilities in plug-ins.
