Mozilla Firefox 4 vs Internet Explorer 9 - Coursework Example

Mozilla Firefox 4 vs Internet Explorer 9" College Attends. INTRODUCTION The world Wide Web has endless boundaries of information studded in it for human beings to take advantage of. Theres something put up on the network for just about anyone and everyone whether it may be educational material or entertainment related data. There are plenty of means of accessing this data on the web and one of it is via Web Browsers. Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are two of the most prevalent browsers that are used to access Internet. Both the browsers have one major difference between. The difference is that of one browser being built in on the format of being an "Open System" (The Mozilla Firefox) and the other being built on the format of being a "Closed System" (The Internet Explorer). Open Source Software An Open source software is one whose source code is publically accessible without any cost. The source code is publically accessible over the internet. An example of an open source software is the Mozilla Firefox web browser. An open source software has been volunteered by lots of individuals for free. It can be used and changed by other developers as per their own free will. This promoted chances to experiment with codes and to review the respective changes that are produced as a result. Open Source Software can be applied in a variety of fields. A number of internet programs such as Sendmail, which is a mail transfer agent, Apache, which is a webserver, Linux, which is an operating system, MySQL, which is a database system and OpenOffice which is an Office utility are popular examples of Open Source Software working around us all the time. Besides these application types there also are a few computer games and computer business applications for example AvErp and other Enterprise Resource Planning systems. Many major companies have Open Source Software running at their core. Examples include Amazon, Google and Yahoo. The relevant characteristics of Open Source Software may be summarized as follows: The technical aspects of Open Source Projects are covered by Computer Science. The dealing of managerial issues and how they relate to the Open Source Software Project are dealt by the Management and the Organization. The issues revolving around the projects and their relevant Social issues are dealt by the social sciences. Psychology is used to assess individuals characteristics that are relevant to the Open Source Project The Economic Models of the Corporations are looked up by the Economics. The legal issues are looked up by the law. (Gacek, Arief, 2004, p. 40) There is one potential reason why Open Source Software have been adopted by the major companies. The increased availability and deployment of Open Source Software makes them appealing for hackers to tread. The threat to the vulnerability of the open source software makes them dangerous since they are not only on their own but when implemented within organizational setups they are integrated with other systems on the internet the breach of which could be lethal to the integrity of any organization. Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox is a web browser that is much lighter than its predecessors. Cleaner interface and faster download speeds are few of the characteristics associated with Mozilla Firefox. The Firefox Version 2.0 was released in the year 2006. This was a Rich version that included features that enhanced its usability. Few of the features were enhanced features of tabbed browsing, security feature of anti- phishing protection, integrated search of multiple search engines etcetera. Closed Source A closed source software is one whose source code is safe guarded and is not shared with anyone The software is available only via proprietorship. The ownership of a closed software resides with an individual or a company who have developed it or who possess its ownership rights. The keeping secret of the source code gives a competitive edge to the owner of the software over its competitors. About the characteristics of a closed software Schryn and Rich (p.2) say, " Software is crafted by individual wizards and the development process is characterized by a relatively strong control of design and implementation. This style is referred to as “cathedral style” " (Schryn, Rich, 2010, p.2) Internet Explorer Internet Explorer is a proprietary web browser that first came into being in the year 1995. The proprietary rights of Internet Explorer reside with the Microsoft Corporation. The softwares source code resides with the owner company. This web browser comes as a companion with the Microsofts Windows Operating system. This is one of the main reasons why the browser is tightly integrated with the Operating System and any vulnerability associated with the Internet Browser becomes a vulnerability for the Windows Operating System as well (Comella, 2007, p.6). Around more than Seventy Percent of the market share resides with internet explorer. Like other browsers it provides it users with the facility of browse the internet via tab and also to install add-ons of other software within it for enhanced browsing experience. CRITEREA There are few generic criteria that are used to compare the two software types. These criteria are narrated in detail as follows: 1. Security Security of web browsers is the most integral criteria for assessing the worth of a web browser. Since web browsers are the window to the internet they are massively vulnerable to exposure with hackers and other malicious software. 2. Software Speed The speed of the software are strictly related to the memory available for running it and also the number of tabs it can bear simultaneously. 3. Usability and Performance Performance issues relate to the start up time of a software and also its running speed and flexibility. Both the browsers can be compared with respect to the upload time that they take and the memory utilization they do in order to manage the users browsing experience. 4. Customization The customization is a criteria that describes the ability of a web browser to integrate itself with add one and extensions and also to be able to support additional themes. The examples of the add-ons may include packages such as download managers, utilities for web development, tools for security and many more add-ons that are freely available from the website of the browser itself. (webcache.googleusercontent.com, n.d.) 5. Licensing Software Licenses are based on copyright laws. In line with the international copyright laws permission or license needs to be taken from the holders of the copyright before a copy of the software can be installed on individual systems. The obtaining of licenses is achieved when the requestor has agreed to conditions of a number of types. Proprietary software need to be paid for. The licenses need to be paid for in order to install a copy of the software of the individual systems. The licenses of open source software grant far more rights than those of proprietary software. However there still are certain terms and conditions that need to be followed in order to use open software. Relevance of the above chosen criteria to the end user is immense since each of the factors affect the way a web browsers becomes useful for the end user. Among the mentioned criteria the most integral is the security associated with them. This criterion is discussed further in detail in the report that follows. COMPARISON Both Internet Explorer 9 and Mozilla Firefox 4 support tabbed browsing and RSS Feeds. These are attractive features for the users. This section aims to compare the security concerns associated with Mozilla Firefox an Internet Explorer. The internet is a wide source of all kinds of activities. The extent to which a certain web browser is secure or not can be assessed by keeping in mind the risk associated with it. Risk is the ultimate decisive factor that determines whether a software is secure enough or not. Here, Risk may well be defined as , "A combination of the likelihood of a successful attack on a system together with the damage to the assets resulting from it." (Hoepman, Jacobs, 2008, p.80) There are various number of hackers and malicious malware present on the internet. It is therefore that the security of the web browsers and how well they can refrain from being attacked by hackers is a major source of concern for web browser hosts and proprietors. Regarding an open source browsers security Witten et al. mention: "Having the source code available creates opportunities for defending against both accidental and malicious faults." (Witten et al. 2001, p.57) It however is highly vulnerable to decide whether a closed software web browser is able to provide more security than an open source web browser or not. Security of Firefox 4 CSP- Content Security Policy Cross Site Scripting (XSS), Click Jacking and Redirection from HTTPS pages to plain old HTTP are few of the security issues that Mozilla Firefox 4 deals with. The browser uses Content Security Policy identifies the server headers are blocks the XSS. This approach could, however result in an erroneous result at times but it still is better than the string based approach that has been adopted by the Internet Explorer 9. Do Not Track Feature The hard to track user feature is enabled when the do-not-track feature of the browser is enabled. This feature, however, is subject to compliance by the host websites that are being accessed. STS Strict Transport Security The STS feature enables user to decide if he wants to use the HTTPS protocol to access websites. The enabling of this feature inhibits the chances of SSL attacks on the pages being accessed. Hide Links The Mozilla Firefox 4 has the ability to hide the visited links from the hackers. Called the CSS tweaks, this feature enables the user to see the changed color of the visited links while the unrecognized user is not able to view the same. Security of Internet Explorer 9 The browser itself claims that it restricts about 99percent of the malware attacking it. Its competing browsers however state that the type of malware that the Internet Explorer 9 poses to be safe against are rare and none of those are the common malware attacking the web browsers. Following is a summary of the salient features of security associated with Internet Explorer 9: Active X Filtering of Active X enables the user to make the choice of blocking or of proceeding accordingly. Tracking Protection By virtue of this feature users can control what they share. There is a Tracking Protection List that has been published by partners such as Truste, PrivacyChoice etcetera. The websites being accessed are notified that the user does not wish to be followed. However it is at the discretion of the websites whether to comply or not. SmartScreen Malware Protection SmartScreen Malware Protection Features comes along with the download manager. The warning messages for malware threat are omitted from the websites that are frequently visited and only those posing a real malware threat are shown to user. IE enables "Pinning" of frequently visited websites which are then run in the sessions of the browser itself. This enables redirects from HTTPS to HTTP. Memory Protection Improved Memory Protection comes with this new version of Internet Explorer 9. The memory related vulnerabilities that used to be taken advantage of by hackers in the earlier versions have now been taken care of by the browser. CONCLUSION "While security for the user might mean the repulse of ‘evil hackers on the Internet’, whoever they might be, security for the vendor means growing the market and crushing the competition." (Anderson, 2002, p.10) The above statement by Anderson (2012) clearly summarizes and concludes the findings of this study as well. It is imperative to conclude here that though theoretically it may be thought that Closed Systems may be more vulnerable malicious activity however there has been no circumstantial evidence to prove that. This study therefore concludes that both the web browsers are serving their required purposes equally well. REFERENCES: Anderson, R. (2002). Security in open versus closed systems—the dance of Boltzmann, Coase and Moore. at Open Source Software Economics. Comella, R. (2007) Firefox VS Windows Internet Explorer. [e-book] SANS Institute. p.1-84. Available through: Sans Reading Room http://www.sans.org/reading_room/whitepapers/basics/firefox-windows-internet-explorer_2073 [Accessed: 2/17/2013]. Gacek, C., & Arief, B. (2004). The many meanings of open source. Software, IEEE, 21(1), 34-40. Hoepman, J. H., & Jacobs, B. (2007). Increased security through open source.Communications of the ACM, 50(1), 79-83. Searchsoa.techtarget.com (2013) What is Firefox? - Definition from WhatIs.com. [online] Available at: http://searchsoa.techtarget.com/definition/Firefox [Accessed: 17 Feb 2013]. Schryen, G., & Rich, E. (2010, January). Increasing software security through open source or closed source development? Empirics suggest that we have asked the wrong question. In System Sciences (HICSS), 2010 43rd Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 1-10). IEEE. doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2010.228 Webcache.googleusercontent.com (n.d.) Firefox Web Browser. [online] Available at: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://discoveropensource.net/review/firefox-web-browser [Accessed: 17 Feb 2013]. Witten, B., Landwehr, C., & Caloyannides, M. (2001). Does open source improve system security?. Software, IEEE, 18(5), 57-61. Read More