WebProNews

Tag: Apple Safari

  • Another Week, Another Round of Serious Google Chrome Security Flaws

    Another Week, Another Round of Serious Google Chrome Security Flaws

    In what is becoming a regular occurrence, Google has issued another Chrome update to fix a number of issues, including seven serious security flaws.

    Google Chrome is the most popular desktop browser by a wide margin. Unfortunately, it also seems to have its fair share of security issues, with Google issuing a patch every couple to few weeks to fix critical ones.

    Google has now issued another fix, addressing seven serious security issues. Even the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) is recommending users and admins update immediately.

    This version addresses vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit to take control of an affected system.

    CISA encourages users and administrators to review the Chrome Release Note and apply the necessary updates.

    A recent report showed Firefox has dropped 50 million users in the last couple of years, and is now hovering around 200 million. Google’s ongoing issues show why it’s important to not only have a variety of browsers on the market, but also ones that use different rendering engines.

    Safari uses Webkit, Firefox uses Gecko and Chrome is based on the Chromium codebase, which uses Blink. Many others, such as Brave, Opera, Vivaldi and Microsoft Edge are also based on Chromium, meaning they all use the same engine.

    As a result, with the popularity of Apple’s Safari on mobile, and Chrome-based browsers on the desktop, Firefox’s future as a private, secure third option is more important than ever.

  • Microsoft Edge Has Worst Default Privacy Settings

    Microsoft Edge Has Worst Default Privacy Settings

    In a study of major web browsers, Microsoft’s Edge was found to have the worst default privacy settings of the entire bunch.

    Douglas J. Leith, computer scientist with the School of Computer Science & Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, conducted the research on Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Brave Browser, Microsoft Edge and Yandex Browser. The study evaluated a number of different factors, including the data transmitted by search autocomplete features, data transmitted while the browsers are idle, back-end services the browsers use and more.

    Brave took the top spot, with not evidence of “identifiers allowing tracking of IP address over time, and no sharing of the details of web pages visited with backend servers,” according to Leith. Chrome, Firefox and Safari were in the middle of the pack.

    “From a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge and Yandex are qualitatively different from the other browsers studied,” continued Leith. “Both send persistent identifiers than can be used to link requests (and associated IP address/location) to back end servers. Edge also sends the hardware UUID of the device to Microsoft and Yandex similarly transmits a hashed hardware identifier to back end servers. As far as we can tell this behaviour cannot be disabled by users. In addition to the search autocomplete functionality that shares details of web pages visited, both transmit web page information to servers that appear unrelated to search autocomplete.”

    For individuals and companies concerned with privacy and security, it seems Edge is the one to avoid until Microsoft tightens things up.