The more things change, the more they say the same. If you’ve gone to Firefox because you were tired of patching and getting hacked through Internet Explorer.. well, start patching. The Mozilla Foundation released FireFox 1.0.7 today in response to a very critical exploit that allowed hackers to launch commands on your system if you use Firefox as your default browser.

Pretty nasty, I’ve patched so hurry up and do so as well. It’s somewhat interesting that people are saying “the honeymoon is over” because of more exploits to Firefox. First of all, claiming x is more secure than y is just asking to become a target. Criminals behind worms and viruses, the folks that write them for commercial gain, are writing things for software they think will give them the largest deployment base. For the longest time, that was Windows XP and IE6. Well, with the new kids on the block, why not take advantage of the 10% install base that may not be hooked into Windows Update? After all, they think they are safe (ignorant) so they present a great target.

I’m sticking with Firefox because of additional functionality and their response to critical exploits has been more rapid than Microsoft. Thats just the nature of the beast, its open and easilly distributable. But if you aren’t patching, you’re really not any better off than Windows 98.

Point being: you’re not really safe, the best you can do is take care of your systems and patch the software you cannot proactively secure.

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