Opera CEO sets up new browser war with Microsoft
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A small Norwegian software company  says with a level playing field it can take on mighty Microsoft  Corp.  in a new battle of the browsers because it has a  better product, picking up where the now-defunct Netscape left  off in the 1990s.
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Opera Softwareâs complaint accuses Microsoft of abusing its dominant position in the desktop PC market by offering only Internet Explorer as a standard part of Windows.
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What do Internet Explorer, Mozilla's browsers, and Opera all have in common? Bugs.
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Opera Releases New Talking Web Browser  Opera 8 Beta 1 has been in development since a long time. With long preview cycle of the version 7.6 series, it looks like Opera decided to rename the latest version as Beta of Opera 8. No Changelog is out yet from the company but ...
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With more and more users opting for &quot;alternate browsers&quot;, Firefox and Opera have been getting a fair deal of attention. Firefox 1.0 has already been downloaded 10 million times since its release in November.
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Microsoft has been accused of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer browser to Windows.
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Safari comes to Windows WWDC Steve Jobs has re-kindled the browser wars - only this time Firefox is in the firing line, as well as Microsoft.â¦
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Microsoft tells corporate administrators that it will push a new version of Internet Explorer 7 their way in February. Here's how to avoid it if you wish.
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Microsoft Corp.  will release a new version of Internet Explorer, the world's most widely used Web browsing software, with stronger, built-in security features, Chairman Bill Gates said on Tuesday.
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WASHINGTON: A new front has been opened in the long-dormant browser war, with an open-source program called Firefox aiming to challenge Microsoft&#39;s dominant Internet Explorer.
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(InfoWorld) - Window Snyder, chief security officer at open source browser maker Mozilla, is caught in the crosshairs of the raging browser vulnerability battle. On one hand, her company launched an upgrade to its Firefox browser on Feb. 23 that specifically aims to fix a number of flaws that have been discovered in the program. On the other hand, she's dealing with almost daily reports of newly identified vulnerabilities in Firefox disclosed by a researcher who makes his work public before informing Mozilla of the problems. As trying as the situation may sound, Snyder admits that the day's conflicts come with the territory of her job and those of security experts at every other browser maker. With the high-profile nature of the browser in today's Internet-based economy, working to eliminate vulnerabilities, respond to researchers, and ward-off malware attacks will remain a large part of the daily routine for the foreseeable future, according to the CSO. Snyder said that Mozilla is receiving a lot more customer feedback of late from people concerned about browser security. "The browser is one of most critical pieces of software on the computer in terms of something attackers are going after," Snyder said. "Attacks are constantly changing and every software developer needs to recognize new threats as they emerge, but that's nothing new, we've always considered security to be a top priority." Despite Mozilla's ongoing security efforts, Firefox has come under intense scrutiny from Michal Zalewski, a well-known independent security researcher who has published a collection of previously undiscovered vulnerabilities in the browser during the month of February. The Firefox security update was already delayed several days so that Mozilla could address an issue published by the researcher earlier this month dubbed the location.hostname vulnerability. And on the eve of Mozilla's release of the revamped browser, dubbed Firefox 2.0.0.2, Zalewski published information about yet another flaw in the product involving a memory corruption issue that could allow attackers to take control of computers running the software. Phishing and spoofing threats are among the attacks likely to be aimed at the latest issue, according to Zalewski. Although Snyder said she would prefer it if Zalewski and other researchers would disclose vulnerabilities to Mozilla before taking them public, she said the company relies on such experts to help it keep customers protected from attacks, as painful as the reports may be. "We would prefer that he would notify us first, but more importantly we are glad researchers are looking at Firefox and helping us fix problems," the Mozilla CSO said. "We also see where the researchers are coming from, in terms of their frustration with the amount of time vendors are taking to fix vulnerabilities." Snyder hopes that as Mozilla improves its ability to patch flaws faster, researchers will work more closely with the nonprofit company. The software maker is also developing a range of new security features for use in the Firefox 3 iteration of the browser, code-named "Gran Paradiso," that is slated to arrive sometime in the second half of 2007. Much of the work is focused on improving users' capability to understand and manage their online credentials, the CSO said. Security researchers maintain that attacks on browser vulnerabilities are only going to increase in volume and frequency, in particular during 2007. According to experts at IBM's newly acquired ISS business unit, which is based in Atlanta, the continued emergence of the "exploits as a service" business, through which malware code writers market their attacks to cyber-criminals via underground channels, will only add fuel to the fire. In another daunting development, roughly 50 percent of the browser attacks observed by ISS' X-Force research team during 2006 used encryption to hide themselves and the data they attempted to steal, with the group expecting use of such tactics only to grow during 2007. "Attackers have honed into Web browser vulnerabilities because the amount of protection people have to defend against these types of threats is not as advanced for many end users," said Gunter Ollmann, director of security strategy at IBM ISS. "In addition to the underground communities where exploits are being bought and sold, it's also become much easier for attackers to build engines that sit on Web servers and generate personalized browser attacks." Ollmann said that such threat engines are being armed with increasingly sophisticated levels of programming logic, giving them the capability to look at the specific version of a browser someone is using and launch attacks specifically aimed at the programs. Malware code writers are also sharing libraries of IP addresses known to be used by security researchers to help avoid detection of their latest work, Ollmann said. Another breed of emerging attack attempts to insert itself between end-users' keyboards and browsing programs to steal data and circumvent the security tools being added to the programs. The so-called "man-in-the-browser" threats have already been found lurking in high-value online transactional systems operated by financial services companies, where they seek to intercept valuable information as it entered by customers, said Dr. Chenxi Wang, analyst with Forrester Research. The spiraling complexity of such threats serves as strong evidence that the battle between malware writers and browser makers is only beginning to heat up, and will continue for some time, the analyst said. Wang believes that one answer to the security problem will be for browser makers to adopt more rigorous software development efforts to minimize vulnerabilities, but even those improved processes won't catch every flaw. Microsoft's Security Development Lifecycle (SDL) program, for instance, appears to have lowered the number of vulnerabilities in its newest Internet Explorer 7 browser compared to earlier versions of the product, but the company has already been forced to patch at least one critical flaw in the software, which was released in Oct. 2006. "This is going to be an arms race that is ongoing for the foreseeable future," Wang said. "There is no excuse for people on the defense side not to be more proactive with security and use better mechanisms during software development to protect against future attacks, but the attackers will always have some new approach as well."
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As I write this article a war is going on on the battlefield of the browsers (programs for surfing the internet such as Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox).
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(Article Central) Opera Software and SlipStream Data announced on Thursday that they have integrated the Opera browser with SlipStream&#39;s Web and email acceleration technology.
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Apple on Monday launched a new attack on rival Microsoft, unleashing a Safari web browser intended to dethrone market-ruling Internet Explorer (IE) and be the iPhone gateway to the Internet.
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Alternative Web browsers like Safari and Firefox will grow in popularity and force Microsoft to respond by improving Internet Explorer, predicts Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape Communications.
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Opera Software has lost Web browser users because Microsoft won't -- or can't -- support Web standards, according to Opera CTO Hakon Wium Lie.
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Mitchell Baker has stepped down as the CEO of Mozilla Corporation, where she helped make the Firefox Web browser a potent rival to Microsoft&#39;s Internet Explorer.Baker is handing over the CEO job to John Lilly, Mozilla&#39;s chief operating officer, who becomes responsible for pushing out the updates to Firefox and Mozilla&#39;s Thunderbird e-mail software, the company announced Monday. Baker will retain her role as chairman and stay active within the group, she said.Baker has been with Mozilla since its inception. She was an attorney with Netscape Communications in the late 1990s when it created the Mozilla Organization, and she stayed with the group after AOL bought Netscape and helped to create the Mozilla Foundation in 2003.Since then the open-source browser has built a worldwide market share of about 15 percent, according to estimates, and as high as 30 percent in some European markets. Mozilla says it now has 125 million Firefox users worldwide.In a blog posting Monday, Baker said she&#39;d been thinking for some time about the best way to use her time and about which of her duties could be handled equally well by someone else. Those duties, it turns out, are the day to day management of Mozilla&#39;s software, while Baker sees a wider role for herself in improving the Web experience for end-users.&quot;I have a vision of the Internet and online life and a positive user experience -- and of Mozilla&#39;s role in creating these -- that is far broader than browsers, e-mail clients and even technology in general,&quot; she wrote.She said she&#39;ll focus on efforts to make the Web standards process more effective, make security &quot;understandable enough that people can protect themselves,&quot; and encourage more &quot;hybrid&quot; organizations like Mozilla -- &quot;organizations which serve the public benefit but support themselves through revenue rather than fund-raising.&quot;&quot;I want Mozilla&#39;s influence on the industry to go beyond the bits we ship as software. More particularly, I want to use the impact Firefox gives us in the market to get openness, collaboration and user control embedded in other products, services and aspects of online life,&quot; she wrote.Lilly, her replacement, will be focused on getting the next version of Mozilla&#39;s Web browser, Firefox 3, out of the door. He also wants to be more open about how Mozilla operates and how it will support itself in the future. &quot;I&#8217;d like us to start talking more in public about how the future looks for Mozilla,&quot; he wrote on his blog.Baker remains chairman of both the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit side of the project, and the Mozilla Corporation, which was formed a few years ago to help raise funds and manage product releases.&quot;I&#39;ve been involved in shipping Mozilla products since the dawn of time, and have no intention of distancing myself from our products or [Mozilla Corporation,]&quot; Baker wrote.