Firefox unsafe?

[AlbertP]

Hackers detail Firefox flaw, calling the browser a "complete mess"
Hacker conferences are so much fun. Case in point: San Diego's ToorCon conference on Saturday, when engineers Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi (what names!) took the stage and called the increasingly popular Firefox Web browser a "complete mess." The duo detailed to the world a security flaw in Firefox, which afflicts the browser's handling of Javascript. As if that weren't painful enough, Spiegelmock and Wbeelsoi also said the glitch was probably "impossible to patch."

"Internet Explorer, everybody knows, is not very secure," said Spiegelmock. "But Firefox is also fairly insecure."

Naturally, Firefox officials were none too happy, reports CNET. The hard-working people from the Mozilla Foundation, which manages Firefox, had hoped for a bit more discretion. Publicizing a Firefox insecurity hurts the browser's image as the safe, spam-free alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. "I think it is unfortunate because it puts users at risk, but that seems to be their goal," groused Window Snyder, head of security for Mozilla.

Digg readers are having none of the Firefox bashing. When one posted: "It makes you wonder why people always say FF is the best browser," one reader was quick to fire back: "Maybe because each Firefox flaw is worthy of a news post, while Internet Explorer has so many that no one bothers to write about them anymore."

http://news.com.com/Hackers+claim+ze...3-6121608.html

[paulhodson]

Originally Posted by AlbertP

..... groused Window Snyder, head of security for Mozilla.

http://news.com.com/Hackers+claim+ze...3-6121608.html

Is that his real name?

[TonyK]

With IE I have a harder time running a secure system. With FF, I can use several different extensions, one of which prevents the running of scripts and allows me to control who, or who cannot, run scripts in my browser.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Originally Posted by AlbertP

Hackers detail Firefox flaw, calling the browser a "complete mess"
Hacker conferences are so much fun. Case in point: San Diego's ToorCon conference on Saturday, when engineers Mischa Spiegelmock and Andrew Wbeelsoi (what names!) took the stage and called the increasingly popular Firefox Web browser a "complete mess." The duo detailed to the world a security flaw in Firefox, which afflicts the browser's handling of Javascript. As if that weren't painful enough, Spiegelmock and Wbeelsoi also said the glitch was probably "impossible to patch."

"Internet Explorer, everybody knows, is not very secure," said Spiegelmock. "But Firefox is also fairly insecure."

Naturally, Firefox officials were none too happy, reports CNET. The hard-working people from the Mozilla Foundation, which manages Firefox, had hoped for a bit more discretion. Publicizing a Firefox insecurity hurts the browser's image as the safe, spam-free alternative to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. "I think it is unfortunate because it puts users at risk, but that seems to be their goal," groused Window Snyder, head of security for Mozilla.

Digg readers are having none of the Firefox bashing. When one posted: "It makes you wonder why people always say FF is the best browser," one reader was quick to fire back: "Maybe because each Firefox flaw is worthy of a news post, while Internet Explorer has so many that no one bothers to write about them anymore."

http://news.com.com/Hackers+claim+ze...3-6121608.html

You can breathe out again, AlbertP: it was a stupid, immature 'prank'. Total BS. The MF's!
http://developer.mozilla.org/devnews...ed-at-toorcon/

[Radianation]

I'm tired of Firefox anyways. Time for something new. I've been using Opera, but it's so buggy.

[Paul Shields]

Firefox has one major flaw for me, and that is to do with memory consumption. It's a real hog, and gets worse with every release. I don't go with the 'it's insecure' argument though. It may be relatively insecure, but IE has a much longer and sadder history of vulnerabilities. In the end, people want the web 2.0 experience and so need their browsers to interact a lot more with servers. The vulnerabilities are more to do with how people interact with a web server (in the old and possibly current days, with MS web servers) than with browsers.

[Radianation]

I think that security issue was a hoax. Firefox 2.0 is out.