Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE
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Just days after the launch of open-source browser Firefox 1.0, Microsoft executives defended Internet Explorer, saying it is no less secure than any other browser and doesn&#39;t lack any important features.
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a version of the open-source Firefox but with support for Microsoft Internet Explorer tied-in. Explorer remains the
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SAN FRANCISCO - Internet users are getting more Web browser choices. On the heels of a new Netscape preview release and the launch of Firefox 1.0, a U.K. company on Thursday released a Web browser it claims is more secure than Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox.
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Microsoft's upcoming Internet Explorer 8 browser has passed a widely-used Web standards test, news that was released after complaints from developers about a lack of information about its support for standards.
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Microsoft plans to release the first beta of the next version of Internet Explorer in the first half of 2008 and said Wednesday that IE 8 has passed a key Web standards test that ensures the browser won&#39;t &quot;break&quot; the Web.IE8 has passed the &quot;Acid2 Browser Test&quot; from the Web Standards Project, which shows whether a browser renders a Web site in a certain way. If the browser renders the site correctly, it means the browser supports certain accepted Web standards.Microsoft posted a video about the browser passing the test on its Channel 9 Web site.Microsoft developed IE before some Web standards, such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and RSS,&#160;were developed, and so older versions don&#39;t support some current standards. Developers would write applications to work with IE rather than to support Web standards because the browser was the de facto standard for surfing the Internet for so many years. Microsoft also was lax in updating IE to meet the demands of Web standards because there was little competition in the browser market for years.With the release and subsequent popularity of open-source browser Mozilla Firefox three years ago, a browser&#39;s need to stay current with Web standards once again moved to the forefront. When Microsoft developed IE7, released in October 2006, the company had good intentions and decided to improve support of Web standards with the new release.However, Web sites that were created for older versions of IE didn&#39;t work properly on IE7. Microsoft hopes to remedy this problem so the situation is not repeated with IE8, according to an IE Blog posting attributed to Dean Hachamovitch, a Microsoft general manager on the IE team.&quot;With respect to standards and interoperability, our goal in developing Internet Explorer 8 is to support the right set of standards with excellent implementations and do so without breaking the existing Web,&quot; according to the blog posting.Hachamovitch said Microsoft is taking a cue in lessons learned from making improvements to CSS in IE7 that &quot;made IE more compliant with some standards and less compatible with some sites on the Web as they were coded.&quot; The key design goal for IE8, he said, is compatibility with existing Web sites and Web standards supported in other browsers to provide a premium user experience.&quot;As a developer, I&#39;d prefer to not have to write the same site multiple times for different browsers,&quot; according to Hachamovitch&#39;s post. &quot;Standards are a (critical!) means to this end, and we focus on the standards that will help actual, real-world interoperability the most. As a consumer and a developer, I expect stuff to just work, and I also expect backwards compatibility. When I get a new version of my current browser, I expect all the sites that worked before will still work.&quot;Microsoft said the final release of IE8 depends upon feedback received from the beta process.
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For many people, using a non-Microsoft browser such as Firefox is now a must for secure Web surfing--but most still keep a copy of Internet Explorer around just in case.
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Microsoft doesn&#39;t seem to be too worried about the competition of Mozilla with their release of Firefox 1.0. Microsoft isn&#39;t planning on releasing a new version of IE anytime soon, but Microsoft&#39;s director
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BetaNews has an interview with Microsoft&#39;s Gary Schare, which includes some discussion about Mozilla Firefox. The Director of Windows Product Management says that Microsoft is looking towards its browser add
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Microsoft is investigating reports of a serious security flaw in Internet Explorer, but has not yet seen malicious code that exploits the reported flaw, the company said today.
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SAN FRANCISCO -- The success of alternative browsers such as Mozilla Foundation's Firefox may ultimately have an unexpected side effect, causing Microsoft Corp. to be more aggressive in leveraging its dominance of Internet client software, said Marc Andreessen, one of the founders of the browser company that Microsoft beat out in the late 1990s, Netscape Communications Corp.
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The Firefox and and Safari Web browsers both continued to snag market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) last month, Web metrics company Net Applications said today.
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(InfoWorld) - A security researcher has found a security bug that could be attacked in Internet Explorer. Mozilla said it plans to patch the problem in its next Firefox software update. No, that's not a typo, just the strange fall-out from an unusual bug that had security researchers debating the question this week, "Who's to blame? Microsoft or Mozilla?" Security researcher Thor LarholmÂ kicked off the controversy on Tuesday, claiming that he had discovered a flaw that would let an attacker run commands on a victim's PC. In his blog posting, Larholm said the bug was similar to a flaw he'd discovered last month in Apple's Safari 3.0 beta software, and he called it an an "input validation flaw in Internet Explorer." The problem is with a URL protocol handler component of Internet Explorer, he said. This software allows Internet Explorer users to launch applications such as Excel or Firefox by clicking on specially written links on Web pages. When Internet Explorer clicks on a link that launches the Firefox browser, however, the software does not properly check its syntax, and that, Larholm said, lets an attacker create a malicious link, that could be used in an attack. Security vendor Secunia ApS rates the flaw as "highly critical." So while the flaw affects Internet Explorer users, it appears to be a risk only to those who already have Firefox installed. And to make matters more complicated, if a Firefox user were to click on one of the specially written links, he would not be affected. Still, Microsoft Security Program Manager Mark Griesi said that the bug was not his company's problem. "We don't feel that there's an issue in IE and therefore there's nothing to be fixed," he said Tuesday. With Microsoft saying it won't fix the vulnerability, Mozilla said it would change the way its Firefox URL protocol handler worked in its next Firefox update. That will fix Larholm's bug, but Mozilla security strategist Window Snyder wouldn't say whether or not she considered the vulnerability to be an IE or Firefox problem. She did, however, point out that without Microsoft making changes to IE, other Windows programs may be at risk. Noted browser bug-hunter Aviv Raff wrote in his blog that he thought both Microsoft and Mozilla were to blame. But another security expert said that the responsibility to fix the problem lies with the open-source browser developers. "This is an oversight in how Mozilla decided to construct their protocol registration, and how they do input validation between this handler and their application," said Eric Schultze, chief security architect with Shavlik Technologies, via e-mail. "I think Mozilla needs to write and release a patch for this issue and Microsoft can take the week off."
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Microsoft has been accused of stifling competition by tying its Internet Explorer browser to Windows.
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The percentage of Americans using Web browsers Mozilla and Firefox is on the up as Internet users turn away from Microsoft&#39;s Internet Explorer due to perceived risks with that application.
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(InfoWorld) - In a public mea culpa, Mozilla's chief security officer acknowledged Monday that Firefox includes the same flaw that the company called a "critical vulnerability" in Internet Explorer during a two-week ruckus over responsibility for a Windows zero-day bug. "Over the weekend, we learned about a new scenario that identifies ways that Firefox could also be used as the entry point," said Window Snyder of Mozilla. "While browsing with Firefox, a specially crafted URL could potentially be used to send bad data to another application. "We thought this was just a problem with Internet Explorer," Snyder continued. "It turns out, it is a problem with Firefox as well." The argument over responsibility for a flaw that involved both Internet Explorer and Firefox began two weeks ago when Danish researcher Thor Larholm argued that Internet Explorer contained an input validation bug that passes potentially malicious URLs to other applications. Larholm called out Firefox's "firefoxurl://" protocol as one that Internet Explorer mishandled. He staked out the position that Internet Explorer was to blame, while other security experts said it was Firefox's fault. As fingers pointed, Mozilla patched the Internet Explorer-Firefox interaction bug by releasing an update, Version 2.0.0.5. Even so, Snyder and others continued to argue that Internet Explorer was the problem. "Microsoft needs to patch Internet Explorer," Snyder said last Wednesday. That same day, Asa Dotzler, director of community development, contrasted what he said were the differences between Microsoft and Mozilla on the bug. "We think it's Firefox's job to ensure that users are protected from malicious Web sites when they're surfing the Web in Firefox. Apparently, Microsoft doesn't think the same for Internet Explorer," Dotzler said then. Friday, Jesper Johansson, a former Microsoft security strategist but now a security program manager at Amazon.com, spelled out how Firefox was as guilty as Internet Explorer of failing to validate input. In a post that leaned on the metaphor of "glass houses," Johansson showed how Firefox passes potentially malicious URLs to other applications, including the multiple-service instant messaging client Trillian. "Firefox is subject to the exact same flaw that they blame on Internet Explorer. Firefox also does not escape quotes in URLs before it passes them on to protocol handlers," he said. Snyder did not credit Johansson by name for alerting Mozilla to the Firefox bug, but she admitted that the flaw should have been spotted. "We should have caught this scenario when we fixed the related problem in 2.0.0.5," she said. She did not specify when a patch would be issued, but one is in the works, according to an entry in Bugzilla.
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In response to the growing number of viruses infecting computers, a spokesman for Germany's Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) has suggested that users consider alternatives to Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer (IE) Web browser. But the agency did not recommend that users steer clear of Microsoft products, the spokesman said, refuting a press release issued Tuesday by browser developer Opera Software ASA.
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Mozilla Firefox Popularity Threatening Microsoft  It is not everyday that Microsoft feels threatened by something so trivial. But I am pretty sure that they would be terrified of November 9. Well, not exactlyâ¦ they are going to rock the gaming world with the launch of Halo 2. But that day Mozilla ...