Germany Warns Against Using Firefox

jayme0227 writes "Due to the recent exploit in Firefox, Germany has warned against its use. This comes a couple months after Germany advised against using IE. Perhaps we should start taking odds as to which browser will be next." Note: the warning (from the Federal Office for Information Security) is provisional, and should be rendered moot by the release later this month of 3.6.2.

Re:Free software in action

[Zoidbot]

You know it's taken over a month to fix this right? The exploit was discovered 18-02-2010 according to securina.

Opera takes less than a week usually (and the occurrence of exploits is less also).

The argument that Open Source allows anyone to fix things and thus making patches quicker does not work, as clearly it also opens up your code for hackers to review looking for new exploits. I don't believe in security by obscurity, but the fact remains, Opera is closed source and the most secure (and fastest) web browser out there.

Re:Google Chrome.

[RobbieCrash]

I'm undoubtedly missing something, but why is installing a program in my personal folder a bad idea? It allows non-elevated installs, has no access to files outside of the user dir unless granted, allows each user to have a totally separate installation so fucking one up doesn't fuck up everyone else's, no registry entries aside from ones to HKCU, uninstalls don't mess everyone else's life up, no reboots on uninstall... I don't get it?

Re:Free software in action

[data2]

Yes, but there is this little detail, which, if you had read http://secunia.com/advisories/38608 [secunia.com], you would know. It was not clear that this was a real bug, there were no details known.
A fairly unknown researcher claimed there was a zero day in firefox, without giving enough details to tell where the bug is.
So what happened was that somebody, who we not know if he is to be trusted, claimed there was a bug. Imagine!
Reaction time from knowing the details to roll-out was far better, at least in this case. This is probably not the best bug to be making a point against patching policy with OSS.

Re:governments warn us about exploits

[icannotthinkofaname]

Yeah, but Safari is made by Apple, Chrome is made by Google, they use the same rendering engine, and so if I need to swear loyalty to one of those companies, I'd rather it be Google than Apple.

Re:governments warn us about exploits

[Jaydee23]

I'm no Apple fanboy but I have (and occasionally still do) used it (v4) on Windows and it works at least well as any other browser. Certainly better than IE. Probably more conforming in the UI dept than Chrome. And most installers carry a pile of garbage unless you deselect it.