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Edge better at handling malware

by on16 October 2017


Google and Mozilla not as good as living on the edge 

Microsoft's Edge easily beat rival browsers from Google and Mozilla in third party tests of the behind the scenes services which power anti-malware warnings and malicious website-blocking.

NSS Labs said Windows 10's default browser is better at blocking phishing and socially-engineered malware attacks than Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

The outfit said Edge automatically blocked 92 percent of all in-browser credential phishing attempts and stymied all socially-engineered malware (SEM) attacks.

The latter encompassed a wide range of attacks, but their common characteristic was that they tried to trick users into downloading malicious code.

The tactics that SEM attackers deploy include links from social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, and bogus in-browser notifications of computer infections or other problems.

Edge decisively bested Chrome and Firefox by decisive margins. Chrome blocked 74 percent of all phishing attacks, and 88 percent of SEM attacks.

Meanwhile, Firefox came in third in both tests, stopping just 61 percent of the phishing attacks and 70 percent of all SEM attempts.

Chrome and Mozilla's Firefox rely on the Safe Browsing API, but historically Mozilla's implementation has performed poorly compared to Google's.

Edge also took top prize in blocking attacks from the get-go. In NSS's SEM attack testing the Voleware stopped every attempt from the first moments a new attack was detected. Chrome halted 75 percent and Firefox halted 54 percent of the brand new attacks

The researchers spent three weeks continuously monitoring the browsers on Windows 10 computers.

Last modified on 16 October 2017
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