Browsers need best-before date

 

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By Matthew Sparkes

Posted on 4 Jul 2008 at 12:37

Internet browsers need a best-before date to prevent surfers using unsafe older versions, claims a group of security researchers.

Over 600 million people are still using an older browser, leaving themselves open to malicious code and phishing attacks, claims a paper from the Computer Engineering and Networks Laboratory in Zurich.

"Almost all users are familiar with the concept of 'sell by', 'expires on', or 'best before' date stamps on perishable goods," claims the report, which suggests that browsers could operate under the same principles.

Over half of Internet Explorer users have failed to upgrade to version 7.0, for example, even though it was released 18 months ago. This leaves users without the latest security updates and patches needed to protect against identity theft and hackers.

An informal piece of research conducted by our own Barry Collins showed that PC Pro readers were slightly more security-conscious than the average browser. However, three out of ten readers visiting our site are still using version 6.0 of Microsoft's browser.

Automatically forcing an upgrade of the browser could protect these users from the latest security threats, the group claims.

"Our measurement confirmed that web browsers which implement an internal auto-update patching mechanism do much better in terms of faster update adoption rates than those without," says the report, rather stating the obvious.