IE10 Blocks More Malware than Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera

[SpywareDr]

NSS Labs - 2013 Browser Security Comparative Analysis: Socially Engineered Malware

Internet Explorer 10 had the highest malware block rate at 99.96%, followed by Chrome 25/26 at 83.16%. Safari 5 and Firefox 19 were a distant third and fourth, with 10.15% and 9.92% respectively. Opera offered virtually no malicious download protection, with a 1.87% score.

TechWorld.com > Internet Explorer 10 blocks more malware than Chrome or Firefox, test finds

[Nabby]

Lets see how long that will last. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that Microsoft is getting it right but it will come full circle due to market share. It also helps that IE10 has only been out less then a year and existing malware targets platforms that have been out much longer.

[SpywareDr]

Here's a quick rundown of the last 5 years:

[Nabby]

I just speak from personal experience but most users I deal with involving spyware get it through IE. It has happened less on windows 7 machines then windows xp vut again it is likely a market share thing, IE still dominates desktop browser usage.

[SpywareDr]

IE still dominates desktop browser usage.

Yes, it sure does:

[Nabby]

It's all market share. This is why there is more malware/spyware/viruses on Windows platform then Mac/Linux, I get it. I still personally prefer using Chrome but it is nice to know that Microsoft has security for end users at the forefront of their new products.

[ImaNihilist]

Malware hasn't ever really had much to do with the browser itself. Malware is almost always a result of plugins. ActiveX is what has been the culprit for the last 10 years.

It's almost always ActiveX, Silverlight, Flash, Java, etc..

[Nabby]

Malware hasn't ever really had much to do with the browser itself. Malware is almost always a result of plugins. ActiveX is what has been the culprit for the last 10 years.

It's almost always ActiveX, Silverlight, Flash, Java, etc..

Touche sir. Like I said my experience is that most people use IE and therefore one will correlate Malware/Spyware infections with IE when it is in fact the plugins.

[SpywareDr]

Have you read any of the reports or articles?

NSS Labs > 2013 Browser Security Comparative Analysis: Socially Engineered Malware

As the first line of defense against malware infection, browsers must provide a strong layer of protection. NSS tested the effectiveness of five leading web browsers against 754 samples of real-world malicious software, and the results show significantly differing protection capabilities. ...

Internet Explorer 10 blocks more malware than Chrome or Firefox, test finds

App Rep system gives IE10 the edge, finds NSS Labs
By John E Dunn | Techworld | Published: 13:07, 15 May 2013

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 10 is better at blocking malware downloads than rivals Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera thanks to superior URL and application reputation technology, a new test by NSS Labs has found.

Browser security has been getting more and more layered and complex. How it works and whether it works is probably a complete mystery to even the most attentive browser users but the NSS Labs study found marked and surprising differences between the most popular browsers.

After testing the latest version of each of the five browsers against 754 malware-infected URLs over 28 days, IE10 (running on Windows 8) achieved a raw block rate of 99.9 percent, ahead of Chrome’s 83.1 percent, Firefox’s 10 percent, Safari’s 9.9 percent and Opera’s 1.8 percent.

What immediately stands out is the huge gap between the effectiveness of IE and Chrome versus the weak blocking of the other three so what is going on and does it accord to real-world performance?

According to NSS, the explanation is that Firefox and Safari both use Google’s older Safe Browsing API v1, a part-cloud URL reputation system, while Opera bought in a similar scheme from a third party. Neither of these options appears to work well any longer.

Interestingly, as of late last year Chrome itself uses the more advanced Safe Browsing API v2 that offers superior protection thanks to a second layer that expands the checks performed on both files as well as URLs.

IE, by contrast, offers the same mix of URL and file reputation filtering as Chrome using SmartScreen but puts itself at the top of the blocking heap by adding a further layer, Application Reputation (sometimes called SmartScreen Application Reputation), basically a cloud scoring system for assessing each application to see whether it or its publisher is known good, known bad, or unknown.

By suspecting all applications until they meet certain criteria, App Rep seems to have better detection of malicious downloads served from previously unknown (i.e. new and potentially risky) domains.

Microsoft and Google's technologies aren't that different to one another in principle but Microsoft's appears to have found more sophisticated file-oriented analytics for spotting realworld threats.

NSS points out that the real-world performance of all reputation systems, including Microsoft's App Rep, will still depend on avoiding false positives and on end user behavior. Just because a warning is thrown up about a URL or file doesn’t mean the user will act on it.

"Regardless of the shortcomings of systems that rely upon untrained users to make correct choices, application reputation is a highly significant and effective protection technology," said the authors.

While it might sound like a technical advantage, the effectiveness of browser security now probably matters as much to PC security as do traditional technologies such as antivirus.

"Web browsers remain the primary infection vector for most consumers and enterprises. Improving the browser’s malware block rate substantially impacts one’s security profile," said NSS research director Randy Abrams.

The results suggested that Google’s Chrome -- and the other browsers taking technology from Google -- was still over-reliant on less effective reputation technology than was being used by Microsoft, he said.

"The net result is that IE 10 users are offered superior protection over Chrome users with one quarter the risk of making a bad download decision. Firefox, Safari, and Opera users are afforded little protection at all by their browsers."

NSS Labs tested IE10's performance on Windows 8; the same App Rec system was also available to Windows 7 users running IE9 but it was unclear whether this would show the same protection, the firm warned.