Chrome More Secure Than Internet Explorer & Firefox

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A recent study has determined that Google Chrome is more secure than Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. But as Google sponsored the research, is there any bias to this information?

A recent research by Accuvant has determined that Google Chrome trumps Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer in terms of security, particularly in sandboxing, URL blacklisting, plugins and JIT hardening. The research did not make a nominal count of possible or existing browser exploits, though. But the methodology involved pointing out features that each browser has and lacks, and pointing out areas where these could improve their code base.

The study was commissioned by Google, but independently done by Accuvant. The research assumed that hackers will find bugs in all three browsers, and compared how the browsers dealt with potential attacks even before these happen. As such, Chrome’s Sandboxing came out as a desired feature, since this limits the potential damage that a website can do on a computer system. Chrome’s Just-in-time hardening (or JIT) also prevents Javascript from compiling and executing malicious code on an ad hoc basis.

Mozilla’s developers have responded, saying the browser “includes a broad array of technologies to eliminate or reduce security threats, from platform level features like address space randomization to internal systems like our layout frame poisoning system.” The company says Sandboxing is just one way of helping weed out threats, but “no technology is a silver bullet.”

Meanwhile, Chrome has just overtaken Firefox in the U.S. as the second most popular browser in terms of traffic. As to whether Google is continuing its search partnership deal with Mozilla, nothing is sure yet, although the fact that Chrome is now gaining traction might mean Google gets more negotiating power on the matter.