Mozilla has reacted to a Symantec report issued on Monday which said serious vulnerabilities were being found in Mozilla"s browsers faster than in Microsoft"s Internet Explorer. The study was conducted over the first six months of 2005.
Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, hit back by claiming on Monday that when a vulnerability is found Mozilla"s "ability to react, find a solution and put it into the user"s hands is better than Microsoft."
He also argued that, according to security company Secunia"s statistics, the Microsoft vulnerabilities were more critical, and had been so over a longer timescale. In the period 2003 to 2005 Secunia have issued 22 security advisories regarding Firefox 1.x, and rate it as "less critical". In the same period Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.x had 85 Secunia advisories, and is rated as "highly critical".
Nitot likened the differences between Firefox and IE vulnerabilities as being like injuries: "Which would you prefer, to have a broken finger, or your head ripped off?"