Firefox buggier than Internet Explorer

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 6 Mar 2009 at 09:00

Mozilla reported more vulnerabilities in Firefox last year than all of its rivals, but dealt with those flaws quicker than its rivals, according to a new report.

Firefox reported 115 flaws in 2008, according to vulnerability-testing company Secunia. This figure was almost four times higher than any other browser, and nearly twice that of Microsoft and Apple combined.

In the same period, Microsoft reported 31 flaws in IE, Apple reported 32 in Safari and Opera reported 30.

However, Mozilla scored highly when it came to patching those flaws. The company reports that Mozilla took an average of 43 days to deal with incidents last year, not all of which covered critical flaws.

In contrast, Microsoft took an average of 100 days to deal with three zero-day flaws, one of which was labelled "high risk." Secunia also reports that three other less serious Internet Explorer flaws that emerged last year remain unpatched.

Mozilla claims the report fails to take into account that it reports its flaws individually, whereas other browser makers tend to roll them into combined updates.

The report comes as Mozilla releases a patch to address six critical vulnerabilities found in Firefox 3.0.6.