When the Mozilla foundation claimed that it's Firefox browser was more secure than Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE), it must have overlooked the fact that IE's insecurity is largely caused by the endless barrage of patches that computer users have to apply.

Make that: fail to apply.

Mozilla just released its second patch of this month, this time diffusing a possible threat that would allow hackers to infest your breach your computer's security with an animated GIF image that causes a buffer overflow.

I applaud the responsiveness of the Mozilla foundation, but would hereby argue that the claim that Firefox is inherently more secure than Internet Explorer is hereby blown to pieces. With every new patch that the foundation releases and as the adoption rate of Firefox goes up, the number of computers running a non-current version of Firefox is bound to rise, simply because users are lazy and fail to apply software patches.

In addition to poor software code itself, the whole notion of having to patch an application to fix security leaks is what has lead up to the current state of abysmal computer security. If the Mozilla foundation is serious about creating a more secure browser, they should tackle this problem first.

24 Mar 2005