Microsoft Edge comes last in browser security battle (techradar.com).
“Edge came off as the least secure browser at the Pwn2Own hacking event, being compromised more times than any other—pretty embarrassing for Microsoft given that the software giant has spent a lot of time talking up Windows 10’s browser on the security front.”
Indeed, suggesting little has changed security-wise since it killed off Internet Explorer with Win 10 release and pretty embarrassing to read when trying to temp you once or twice a week at the MSN portal.
“Successful hacks leveraged against Microsoft’s browser included efforts using vulnerabilities in the Chakra JavaScript engine, and a major exploit which utilized a heap overflow bug (in combination with other tricks) to pull off a ‘virtual machine escape’. In other words, the ethical hackers in question managed to escape the confines of a virtual machine to attack the host system it was running on—something that has never before happened at Pwn2Own.”
Oh dear. And the other browsers?
“As with last year’s Pwn2Own, it was Google’s Chrome, which wasn’t hacked at all; an impressive result indeed. Firefox was beaten once, and Safari was compromised 3.5 times – the ‘half’ being a partial success (it was judged thusly because the bug in question had already been fixed in a beta version of the browser). Safari didn’t do so well…”
Which we shall all forget because it’s Apple.
Nevertheless, demonstrating Patch Tuesday and the modern auto downloading equivalent of those old Service Pack CDs isn’t really something that should trigger Fear Face —unless of course something has dropped in your conspiracy dungarees hinting that latest patch really is the reason that old hardware you got for Win 95 will suddenly stop working (Latest Picks 26th Aug. 2016):
Windows 10 Creators Update will see a far more secure Edge browser (techradar.com).
Creators Update being the next major after the Anniversary Update scheduled for April 11th.
“New changes are coming with the Creators Update for Windows 10 which will considerably bolster the strength of said sandbox when the upgrade arrives next month.”
But for others a less hypothetical hackathon attack may lie on an open source OS on something Internet of things you’ve not realised has been doing other “things” since opened from under tree at Xmas, but have at least aimed to address it while those in conspiracy dungarees still waft and wave that it never needed to be addressed in the first place, for it is Linux after all:
Google reports decrease in malware on its Android Play Store (myce.com).
“Google reports that at the end of 2016 about 0.05% of all devices, that only downloaded apps from the Google Play Store ,was infected with some kind of malware. The year before that number was 0.015%. About 0.016% of all apps installed through the Google Play Store in 2016 contained a trojan, a decrease of 51.5% compared to the year before. Also the amount of malcious [sic.] downloaders, apps with a backdoor and phishing apps, decreased with respectively 54.6%, 30.5% and 73%.”
However, to show that statistics can be skewed through the eye of a needle when needed:
“Google did see an increase of the percentage of Android devices on which malware is installed, from 0.5% in 2015 to 0.71% last year. This number includes all Android devices, also those with apps that are installed from other sources than the Google Play Store. In its blog Google also reports the way and how fast older Android devices receive security updates. The company is criticized for the fact that many Android owners have to depend on phone manufacturers, and not Google, for security updates. Updates are therefore much slower released that needed, or are not released at all for older devices.”
Hmmm, and thus remaining unpatched no doubt and not raising update patch Fear Face while displaying extra interesting ads for you to click and silently download from: Most security vulnerabilities reported for Google’s Android operating system in 2016 (Latest Picks 3rd Dec.2016).
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