Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

Is Microsoft's Edge Browser any More Secure than the IE it's Supposed to Replace?

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday December 16 2015, @08:41PM   Printer-friendly
from the the-more-things-change-the-more-they-stay-the-same dept.

fliptop writes:

While both Betteridge's Law and common sense say, "No," Zack Whittaker at ZDNet takes a closer look:

An analysis of the last five-months' worth of monthly software updates shows that Edge had 25 vulnerabilities shared with versions of Internet Explorer, which had a total of 100 vulnerabilities.

Earlier this month on its scheduled Patch Tuesday update offering, Microsoft released MS15-124, a cumulative update for Internet Explorer, and MS15-125, a near-identical patch for Edge. Of the 15 flaws patched in Internet Explorer, 11 of those were also patched in Edge.

According to a Microsoft blog post earlier this year, the software giant's newest browser, an exclusive for Windows 10, is said to have been designed to "defend users from increasingly sophisticated and prevalent attacks."

In doing that, Edge scrapped older, insecure, or flawed plugins or frameworks, like ActiveX or Browser Helper Objects. That already helped to cut a number of possible drive-by attacks traditionally used by attackers. EdgeHTML, which powers Edge's rendering engine, is a fork of Trident, which still powers Internet Explorer.

[...] Older versions of Internet Explorer will be retired by mid-January, giving millions of users about a month to upgrade to Internet Explorer 11, or to Edge on Windows 10.

Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Is Microsoft's Edge Browser any More Secure than the IE it's Supposed to Replace? | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 68 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday December 16 2015, @10:04PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Wednesday December 16 2015, @10:04PM (#277332)

    One could argue that by responding "I'm Edge" instead of "I'm IExx", the new browser prevents some older malware from executing specific exploits, regardless of whether they would still work, and is therefore MORE SECURE! [cue rainbows and unicorns].
    Probably a tiny fraction of 1% more secure, beating, for a lot less money, the TSA.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  
    Total Score:   2  

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @10:26PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 16 2015, @10:26PM (#277341)

    99% of the time I browse with firefox impersonating ie, chrome or safari and have never had a malware infection succeed (that I know of).

    But I also disable javascript 99% of the time, so that might have something to do with it too.