IE8 Catches most ‘Social Malware’
April 19, 2009 Software Review
NSS Labs is a self-governing entity with business in many areas unrelated 
to this, but it’s important to note that the study was funded by Microsoft.
“Social engineering malware,” is the most important form of malware these days. The basic idea is that the user is lured into visiting a web site and downloading malware believing it to be something else.
The recent generation of web browsers has approached this problem with reputation services, just as they have with phishing. Just as phishing sites are often initially blocked by browsers (“…this is a reported phishing web site”) based partly on blacklists of domains and IP addresses, so are malware sites being blocked.
NSS Labs’ tests came up with these results overall:
Browser Malware Catch Rate
IE8 (RC1) 69%
Firefox 3.07 30%
Safari v3 24%
Chrome 1.0.154 16%
Opera 9.84 5%
IE7 4%
Protection such as this is a good defense-in-depth measure, but it’s no substitute for a good anti-malware program and other protections, such as least-privileged access.
