Firefox gets Google anti-phishing tool

By Steve Malone

Posted on 9 Mar 2006 at 10:56

The open source browser Firefox is to get anti-phishing technology courtesy of Google. The additional security is in the form of a plug in for Firefox.

The latest Symantec Internet Security Threat Report reports that phishing attempts are an increasing problem. In the second half of 2005, Symantec says it blocked 1.5 billion phishing attempts, a 44 per cent increase over the first half of 2005 and that one in 119 emails were determined to be a phishing attempt, up from one in 125 in the first six months of 2005.

When Google lured Firefox lead developer Ben Goodger onto the payroll a year ago, many suspected that Google may have wanted to launch its own browser. while this has not turned out to be the case, the search engine giant is not above giving a helping hand to the upstart browser.

For those who think that Google is already getting too much information out of them, it should be noted that in 'enhanced protection' mode Google says it will be capturing the URLs that are entered and information about the content of the site 'for evaluation'. Enhanced protection can be turned off, however.

Although not perfect by any means, one of the biggest selling points of Firefox has been its improved security over Internet Explorer. In the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, Firefox had the highest number of new vendor-confirmed vulnerabilities with thirteen while Microsoft Internet Explorer had the highest number of new vulnerabilities (including both vendor confirmed and non-vendor confirmed) at 24. The difference being that the nature of the Open Source methodology would mean that flaws are much more likely to be spotted by the additional number of people reviewing the code.

Microsoft is currently beta testing its next generation Internet Explorer 7 and has taken some pains to ensure the new browser is more secure than its predecessor and IE 7 has its own anti-phishing protection built in.

Another story in the news today, on the Google and Firefox relationship is: Mozilla makes money shock