Hackers claim zero-day flaw in Firefox (ZDNet)

Hackers claim zero-day flaw in Firefox (ZDNet)

Posted Oct 1, 2006 18:27 UTC (Sun) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888)
In reply to: Hackers claim zero-day flaw in Firefox (ZDNet) by job
Parent article: Hackers claim zero-day flaw in Firefox (ZDNet)

> I really have a problem with the "nothing is fully secure" mantra.

Probably because you're smart enough to recognize that that is the mantra of someone pushing insecure products. (So you might as well buy theirs).

Security is not a binary "is or is not" property. Security is a contiuum, and it depends on the value (to someone else) of what you're trying to secure and how much effort they're willing to go to to get it or damage it. So while Firefox may not be absolutely secure (as indeed, nothing is), it's more secure than a certain widely used other browser out there. There may well be other browsers that are more secure than Firefox -- or at least more secure in some aspects, perhaps less so than others.

It's like the old joke about two hikers who encounter an engraged grizzly bear, and one stops to put on sneakers. "Are you crazy? You'll never run faster than the bear" his buddy says. "I don't need to run faster than the bear, I just need to run faster than you." Unless you've got something of unique value on your system, your system just needs to be secure enough to encourage crackers to go elsewhere. (And yes, that's a moving target.)

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