Computer and Library Learning (Archived)

NSS Labs, an independent research company, released its report on “Web Browser Security: Socially-Engineered Malware Protection: Comparative Test Results – Europe” that compared the capabilities of Apple® Safari® 5, Google Chrome™ 10, Windows® Internet Explorer® 8, Windows® Internet Explorer® 9, Mozilla® Firefox® 4 and Opera™ 11.

Gregg Keizer, writing on Computerworld, highlighted Google Chrome web browser’s improved score by 340% in the anti-malware blocking category; however, this hyperbolic description only accounted for an overall 13.2% success rate in blocking malware to which NSS Labs exposed the browser during the test period. The intent of the NSS study was to determine which web browser best identified, warned and/or blocked malicious website addresses or URLs from being viewed by a computer user. This second place finish was well behind Internet Explorer 9 which finished first with a 99.2% success rate; Firefox 4 and Safari 5 shared third place at 7.6% with Opera 11 dead last with a 6.1% malware protection rate. Alex Knapp, writing on Forbes.com, noted that Microsoft’s security was previously “an albatross around its neck” but acknowledged Microsoft’s renewed efforts in thwarting socially engineered malware (SEM) in the NSS Labs test.

The main reason for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9’s success appears to be its landmark investment in application reputation technology and its aim to classify applications on the Internet. Microsoft noted that its SmartScreen® Filter includes two main areas, viz.:

• Application reputation gives information about a downloaded program on the basis of file and publisher reputation. Microsoft boasts that IE9 is the only mainstream browser providing this application reputation capability for users to better decide what they can'trust. The application reputation removes unnecessary warnings for well-known files and shows warnings of a severe nature when the download poses a high risk of maliciousness.

• Microsoft has improved its SmartScreen URL reputation capability with over 1.2 billion blocked malware and phishing attacks since the release of Internet Explorer 8.

 Of the 99.2% of live threats caught on Internet Explorer 9, 96% were captured with the SmartScreen URL reputation and the remaining 3.2% with application reputation. Mozilla Firefox’s performance actually declined from 2010 when it had stopped 19% of malicious threats. Mathew J. Schwartz, writing on Information Week, emphasized the importance of browsers’ capabilities to stop malware spreading through social engineering because no anti-virus or anti-malware software exists that halts all malware in all instances.

NSS Labs stated that its conclusions were independently-derived and that it had not received funding from vendors. This contrasts with NSS Labs’ October 2010 report which was funded by Microsoft. Google criticized this report’s narrow methodology for solely concentrating on socially engineered malware while ignoring vulnerabilities within browsers or plug-ins. The Google Chrome browser uses sandboxing which prevents malware from installing itself on the computer or affecting activities within another browser tab.