Economist: Browser wars are back
Ian G
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13395407&CFID=1252820&CFTOKEN=16999516
Tech.view
Browser wars are back
Mar 27th 2009
From Economist.com
This time the battle is over security rather than features
THE good news is that the latest version of Microsoft’s web-browser,
Internet Explorer version 8, which was finally released to the public on
March 20th, is a vast improvement over its predecessor. The bad news is
that it is not an automatic upgrade; you have to download and install it
yourself.
That is a strange decision. Internet Explorer has 67% of the browser
market precisely because it comes ready-installed as the default browser
on nine out of ten personal computers. Usually, one of the first things
done by those who care about setting up a Windows computer properly is
to replace Internet Explorer with a safer and more flexible browser such
as Firefox or Opera. Yet most people leave the Microsoft browser in
place and suffer the consequences.
The same goes for Macintosh users. Over the past half a dozen years, the
default browser on all Macs has been Apple’s Safari—a nifty program that
uses a rendering engine and tools for running Java scripts borrowed from
a venerable Linux browser called Konqueror. Certainly Safari, which is
used on 8% of computers, is as light and nimble as Konqueror.
Unfortunately, though, it offers an open door for cyber-criminals
seeking to hijack computers for dastardly deeds. Both Firefox (22%
market share) and Opera (less than 1%) are better bets for Macs, though
neither is as secure on Apple’s operating system as it is on Windows.
One of the main reasons why a Windows machine is harder to crack than a
Mac is because of the way Microsoft randomises the memory locations of
code inserted into processes. Even if they can get into the system,
hackers then have trouble finding where their nefarious bit of code is
lurking. And if they cannot find the malicious code, they cannot get it
to do its dirty work.
Apple is not big on randomisation, which is part of the reason why
Macintosh computers are so vulnerable to online attack, whether running
Safari or even Firefox. Hackers agree the toughest nut to crack is
Firefox running on Windows.
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