Microsoft"s Internet Explorer 10 web browser may be the newest member of the IE family, but a new study now claims IE10 does a near perfect job of blocking malware threats while running on Windows 8; the study"s results were released on Monday by NSS Labs.
NSS Labs states in their report (in PDF format) that in addition to IE10, the firm tested Google’s Chrome 25 and 26, Mozilla"s Firefox 19, Apple’s Safari 5, and Opera 12 from March 13th to April 9th. The browsers were tested on virtual machines that ran Windows 8 Enterprise. According to the study:
An initial sample set of 11,296 unique and suspicious URLs entered the system; 754 URLs were found active and malicious, and met the criteria for entry into the test. In total, 550 test runs were performed by the five browsers against these unique 754 URLs – resulting in over 18,000 test cases per browser.
The final results can be seen in the graph above, as IE10 blocked a whopping 99.96 percent of all malware during the test period. The two versions of Chrome blocked 81.16 percent of malware threats. Safari 5 blocked just 10.15 percent, and Firefox 19 block only 9.92 percent. Mozilla has since released two updated version of Firefox, including one that was unofficially released on Monday. Opera 12 only blocked 1.87 percent of its malware threats.
NSS Labs"s main conclusion from its web browser testing is that both IE10 and Chrome "benefit significantly from file reputation systems combined with URL reputation and site blocking technologies."
Source: NSS Labs | Image via NSS Labs