IE8 best at blocking malware sites, says studyA recently released report claims that Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is more than twice as effective at blocking malware sites than its nearest rival.
According to NSS Labs, which conducted the Microsoft-sponsored study, IE8 blocked 69% of the 492 malware-distributing Web sites that were included in the survey data. Mozilla's Firefox, meanwhile, blocked only 30% of those same sites.
"I was surprised that IE8 did as well as it did," Rick Moy, president of NSS Labs, said in an interview Tuesday. "But Microsoft has put a lot of effort into security in IE8."
NSS tested six Windows-based browsers -- IE8 RC1, Firefox 3.0.7, Safari 3, Chrome 1.0.154, Opera 9.64 and IE7 -- against so-called socially engineered malware: Sites that dupe visiting users into downloading attack code. Typically, the download is disguised, often as an update to popular software such as Adobe's Flash Player.
The tests did not include sites that attack browsers without any user interaction, an increasingly common tactic by hackers who often infect legitimate sites with kits that try a number of different exploits in the hope of compromising an unpatched PC.
To defend against the kind of malware sites that NSS tested, browser makers have been adding anti-malware features to their software. Mozilla, for example, added malware site blocking to Firefox 3.0, which shipped last June.
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