The Fox Is in Microsoft's Henhouse (and Salivating)

Published on December 19, 2004 By Black Xero In WinCustomize News

FIREFOX is a classic overnight success, many years in the making.

Published by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting open-source software that draws upon the skills of hundreds of volunteer programmers, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it's free.

Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9. Just over a month later, the foundation celebrated a remarkable milestone: 10 million downloads. Donations from Firefox's appreciative fans paid for a two-page advertisement in The New York Times on Thursday.

Until now, the Linux operating system was the best-known success among the hundreds of open-source projects that challenge Microsoft with technically strong, free software that improves as the population of bug-reporting and bug-fixing users grows. But unless you oversee purchases for a corporate data center, it's unlikely that you've felt the need to try Linux yourself.

With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.

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For the first time, Internet Explorer has been losing market share. According to a worldwide survey conducted in late November by OneStat.com, a company in Amsterdam that analyzes the Web, Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. Firefox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing.

Read detailed article from New York Times at Link

Comments (Page 3)

CygnusXII

on Dec 20, 2004

BTW Netscape was bought by AOL, but AOL bases their browsing TECH on IE.
They continued the Monopoly case against MS and won, getting rights to IE free for 7 years I think it was, as well as other concessions and $$$. Before aquiring Netscape, they licensed IE Tech. I used to do Customer Support for MS, and mainly spent my time fixing broken DUN, and TCP-IP problems, and a host of other problems, caused by AOL Freebieware.

Septimus

on Dec 20, 2004

Let me tell you, that Opera is based on IE

Wha?!? Where on earth did you here that. LOL

Ah well, no matter. Merry Xmas all anyway.

PixelCargo

on Dec 20, 2004

Speak techy all you like , im with Firefox all the way!!!

im only on dialup so I use the Fashget plugin for my downloads so no problems with that.

Microsoft updates only work with IE and that sucks, its like opening the door to get some fresh air but you let in cockroaches with IE.

Brandon Paddock

on Dec 20, 2004

This is 100% NOT TRUE, and you know it.. Maxthon is nothing more than a buggy cheap IE shell browser, and as such, is vulnerable to the entire internet, just like IE is. A mere hour of web browsing with IE is all you need to have a half dozen pieces of spyware/adware installed on your PC.

Maxthon is an IE shell, but it's not buggy. It's not "vulnerable to the entire internet," whatever the hell that means. Neither is IE. You see, my clients and I don't run as Administrators all the time. My clients' networks are managed by AD group policy and it does not allow them to run unapproved controls, or install browser helper objects without permission. Our systems are always patched within hours of any Windows security update being released.

Maxthon is no different than the 20 other cheap IE shell browsers. Whats the point of using Maxthon over Firefox? Firefox has better tab support (with Tabbed Browser Preferences), is faster, doens't infect you with spyware, and has much more stability.

The point is it's just as secure, faster, and more compatible. My clients rely on consistent access to SharePoint enabled applications, as well as IE-driven software.

Bottom line, anyone that still uses IE, is either in denial, or just doesn't understand computers very well.

Perhaps you should avoid such mind-numbingly ignorant and all-ecompassing statements in the future.

I never said that YOU shouldn't use FireFox, or that using it is a poor choice. In fact, I think competition in any market is a good thing, and I'm happy for the FireFox developers who obviously put a lot of hard work into their product.

However I am bugged by the FUD campaign led by bandwagon jumpers like yourself. IE and Maxthon work perfectly for me and for my customers, and we're not going to switch just because you called me names.

Kobrano

on Dec 20, 2004

...

Kobrano

on Dec 20, 2004

Disable ActiveX + use a tabbed shell to IE and you have more or less matched standard Firefox (no extensions).

Thats not fully true, and is a bit misleading I think. I've done security and antivirus consulting for about 3 years, and i've extensively tested IE under controlled circumstances and found even locked down, it is still highly vulnerable - even in the hands of an expert. Theres been a succession of things such as Pageframe exploits, Javascripts (Targetting IE only), and many others - that despite locking down hActiveX, still manage to cause issues. About the best you can do is use IE with zones, and even then, its still not perfect, and you are left with less than satisfactory browsing.

There are little dozens of examples out there, one nice little one is the Cross Site Scripting vulnerability, which doesn't effect Firefox of course,but affects all IE, even patched IE's. Bottom line, even locking down IE isn't going to prevent problems, we've tested that, and it failed. Firefox closes you out from about 99% of the exploits and problems out there, and its ridiculous to ignore that and continue exclusively using IE.

Oh, and where did I "Call you names" Paddock? Try not to be so sensitive when you are shown to be incorrect about something, it does wonders to kill your cause.

Here, try another vulnerability here yourself: Link Note that Firefox isn't effected yet again.

Brandon Paddock

on Dec 20, 2004

Cross Site Scripting vulnerability, which doesn't effect Firefox of course,
but affects all IE, even patched IE's.

Doesn't work against me (running Maxthon on XP SP2). Just shows "Script Error!" in the status bar when I click on the link.

Oh, and where did I "Call you names" Paddock? Try not to be so sensitive when you are shown to be incorrect about something, it does wonders to kill your cause.

You said I must be "in denial, or just don't understand very much about computers." I consider that name-calling.

I've done security and antivirus consulting for about 3 years

Now that's just scary.

Kobrano

on Dec 20, 2004

Doesn't work against me (running Maxthon on XP SP2). Just shows "Script Error!" in the status bar when I click on the link.

Are we talking IE or IE shells now? I was talking IE for this specific vulnerability. I think Maxthon hacked in some code to disable that exploit.

For IE shells, well, I have plenty of links that blow up Maxthon, but won't post them here, because frankly, they could cause someone to get trojans, and that would be a bad thing. But I still wonder why people use Maxthon/MYIE2, when Firefox does the same or more, and isn't vulnerable to much of anything.

Not that i'm a Firefox fanboy, its just that if more people used it, it would save me a ton of work going around and cleaning the crap off friends machines for them. Thank god I got my entire family and relatives all running Firefox - its been peaceful this year.

I think IE is big business for AntiSpyware companies, I mean with Firefox installed, you wouldn't need all these fluffy products like Adaware and Spybot.

Brandon Paddock

on Dec 20, 2004

I just tried it in plain old IE.

It says "Internet Explorer has blocked this site from using an ActiveX control in an unsafe manner" in the Information Bar.

paxx

on Dec 20, 2004

The problem with IE is not that its a bad browser, it's actually an OK browser, although I've been waiting for full PNG support in IE for ages, and it problably will never come at this rate. The main problem with IE is that it's integrated in your system. Active X are not a problem per say, nor are VB Script or Javascript. The problem is that once you find a way to exploit these technologies in IE, you can get complete access to an IE user's computer, and do some real damage. If IE was tied in the system so much, it wouldn't be a problem.
THAT's why Firefox, Mozilla, Opera or any non-IE browsers are more secure.

Aside from that, the reason I like Firefox so much:
- Extensions
- Extensions
- Extensions
!!!!
With the available extensions (and new ones are made every day) you can pretty much custom build the browser you want.

Brandon Paddock

on Dec 20, 2004

I don't see how the Windows shell making use of IE is a security problem. IE itself doesn't have any more reign over the system than any other application.

If you're running as an administrator, any program (including FireFox) that is exploited can wreak havoc on your system.

It's like running with root privileges on a *nix box. You just shouldn't do it.

Josh The Mac Addict

on Dec 20, 2004

This is sweet. Rock on, Mozilla.

tjesterb

on Dec 20, 2004

IE has some features that may be better than Firefox ( it loads faster due to parts of it always running as part of the Windows OS), it is a little more forgiving of bad code (MS Frontpage sites mostly). But Firefox has, IMO, more features for the end user. Just as we have WB skins and Icon packages done by artists here at WC, you have indivduals writing some great extensions that allow you to personalize your browser to perfectly suit how you want it to work. I think MS has grown slack since they ran the old Netscape out of the picture. It seems obvious that any effort they (MS) has put into improving their product has only been because a new competitor has risen up. But, hey, that's a good thing. If we get better browsers out of it, we all win.
FF has one edge in that it will run on all three major platforms. MS has dropped support for IE for Mac, and I doubt we see them writing a Linux version any time soon.

My experience has been that FF is about a thousand times more secure against malware than IE. I can't for the life of me, get my dad to use anything but IE. Last time I ran Adaware on his PC, it found over 400 pieces of spyware. And trust me, my dad isn't surfing porn or warez. He pays his bills, reads the news, and that's about it. There are plenty of otherwise respectable online companies who now bundle spyware into their downloads. Just read Brad's article on "The Stardock Way" over on JU.
Peter Torr (of Microsoft) makes the point that Moz/FF and most extensions are unsigned http://blogs.msdn.com/ptorr/archive/2004/12/20/327511.aspx and the subsequent discussion at Slashdot, http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/21/0038235&tid=172&tid=154&tid=109&tid=113&tid=1
Firefox isn't perfect, but it suits me a lot better than IE ever did, and it looks as though a few thousand others feel the same way.

BTW, Opera is also based on the gecko engine. Go to Shields-Up in Opera and it'll show as a netscape/gecko build.

Brandon Paddock

on Dec 20, 2004

MS dropped IE support on the Mac because Apple made an IE-clone called Safari

Safari is based on Konqueror/KHTML, the IE clone for *nix.

Iben

on Dec 20, 2004

Mouse over Iben for my reply.

I don't believe we've covered the spell checker yet?

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