Ask HN: Is Firefox team too small to do serious security tests? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is Firefox team too small to do serious security tests?

11 pointsurlwolf7 comments

With the year coming to an end, I was thinking about what would make me switch away from FF. There's only one thing: security. With a dwindling market share, and a C-suite that seems to be distracted at best, the risk is that the team is too small.

What do you think?

Looking at raw numbers of cve reports, FF is doing better than chrome:

https://www.cvedetails.com/product/3264/Mozilla-Firefox.html?vendor_id=452

https://www.cvedetails.com/product/15031/Google-Chrome.html?vendor_id=1224

But the severity of those reports is another matter. One single report could make a night and day difference.

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Advertising networks are vectors for malware:

https://www.cisecurity.org/insights/blog/malvertising

https://www.malwarebytes.com/malvertising

https://theconversation.com/spyware-can-infect-your-phone-or...

Even the FBI recommends ad blockers:

https://www.ic3.gov/Media/Y2022/PSA221221?=8324278624

So if you're concerned about security then you want the browser with the best ad blocker.

uBlock Origin works best in Firefox:

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

yes and it doesn't hurt to be off OSX and Microsoft Windows

Another good choice would be Brave which has a builtin ad blocker which natively supports uBlock Origin style block lists.

I have the same worry (although I have no evidence, and haven’t done much research into finding evidence).

I've slowly transitioned from FF to Chrome over the past year, for this reason. I still use both, but am trying to prepare myself for a time that comes when FF is no longer a viable primary browser.

Just going on what vulnerbilities that have been found (and assigned a CVE number) is one thing. The real question should be, how big is the real number of vulnerbilities that have not been found yet.

Looking at this from a pure CVE perspective, using Firefox rather than Chrome may reduce your exposure simply due to the fact that Firefox has a lower market share.

Is there a meaningful difference between the major browsers in terms of security? It’s hard to say to be honest!

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