Microsoft has always been fond of paying analysts to say that its products are best, or having partners release reports showing how their rivals’ products are second-rate, and, now, Web sites that “show” how Internet Explorer (IE) is better than Chrome and Firefox when it comes to security. Really? Didn’t Microsoft just release yet another major Internet Explorer patch?
I quote from the IE patch update (MS11-081), which apples to all currently supported versions of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer and IE 6 as well: “The most severe vulnerabilities could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. An attacker who successfully exploited any of these vulnerabilities could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights.”
Yes, that includes IE 9, the best and most up-to-date IE which is only available on Windows 7. Isn’t it funny how Microsoft claims that IE 9 is the most secure of its browser family, but somehow it has to have the same problems fixed that exist in IE 6, 7, and 8? Could it be that it’s really not that different after all from the rest of its historically insecure family?