Major browsers fall on day one of Pwn2Own, Chrome survives

[SNGX1275]

For those who dont use an antivirus, how do you know its not infected... if you dont use an antivirus?? Does it look healthy?? Felling in shape?

I can't speak for everyone, but until very recently I hadn't ran AV on my machines in years. The way I ensured I wasn't infected was by using Opera to steer clear of most browser exploits, used gmail for email rather than OE out Outlook, and occationally ran an online scan, like eset's. Those steps with a bit of common sense will keep you clean. The reason I am now not going AV free is because I saw first hand (by testing it out on my netbook) how little resources Microsoft's Security Essentials consumes.

 

[Guest]

Every one who thinks Opera is not a "real browser", or it is a "new kid", or it's not compliant to security and other standards, do not realy know what Opera is. In fact, Opera uses to be the first to implement a lot of very interesting things (at least to me), like mouse gestures (since version 3.sth), "Reload every..." (I use this as keepalive...), tabs, test compliance (http://acid3.acidtests.org/, http://www.css3.info/selectors-test/test.html), synchronization, widgets and, more recently, some features not interesting to me, but certainly useful to a lot of people (Opera Turbo, Opera Unite,...). By the way, I think one should point his/her preferred browser to those two links before saying something about Opera. In spite of some annoyances (e.g. lack of smartcard support), I'm stuck with Opera for some 12+ years. (please forgive my poor english...)
edivaldoapereira@yahoo.com.br

 

[Guest]

I strickly use IE8 and I never had a virus detected. I tried all other Browsers but alway revert back to MS IE. I love Bill Gates! I wish I was he son! He is my hero! Windows 7 rules and so does IE8.

 

[Burty117]

Guest said:
I strickly use IE8 and I never had a virus detected. I tried all other Browsers but alway revert back to MS IE. I love Bill Gates! I wish I was he son! He is my hero! Windows 7 rules and so does IE8.

I pitty you deeply.

Or its because your smart and just don't click on stuff you don't know.

Either way though, still pitty you for having to use the worst browser ever made.

 

[captaincranky]

I pitty you deeply.

Or its because your smart and just don't click on stuff you don't know.

Either way though, still pitty you for having to use the worst browser ever made.

There,there, now Burty, don't let that mean old nasty "guest" upset you. That was just the posting equivalent of a "drive by download". Don't give it a second thought, just go play your Crysis game.

 

[Burty117]

captaincranky said:

I pitty you deeply.

Or its because your smart and just don't click on stuff you don't know.

Either way though, still pitty you for having to use the worst browser ever made.

There,there, now Burty, don't let that mean old nasty "guest" upset you. That was just the posting equivalent of a "drive by download". Don't give it a second thought, just go play your Crysis game.

LOL! this made me chuckle =)

I do quite enjoy starting rows on here though. its nice to see people who are still (relativley) sane =)

 

[matrix86]

Everybody keeps listing the cool features of Opera, but they ALWAYS forget what I think is the coolest...the voice commands. Why are these never brought up?

I don't really use it anymore because I prefer the extreme customization of FireFox. Now that I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking, I just use that to control my browser. But for a while, I used the voice control in Opera and it worked very well for me.

 

[Clrabbit]

Couple of things to answer here:

"How do people that don't use AV know there clean?"
The smart users when they say "I don't use AV" really means "I don't bother with active AV software." meaning once a year or less they do have about 3~6 AV programs they sweep there computer with a find nothing!
At least this is what I do every time before I reformat my system or once a year once ever comes sooner I like to run a good sweep of the system, just for fun. so far the the only things found over the last 10years has been 4 cookies in firefox... that I'm pretty sure were false positives. Sense they were data tacking cookies I actually wanted to keep around, so i didn't have to log-in to things all the damn time.

For the most part as long as you have your Browser/system/firewall/router/modem setup right it doesn't matter how "Questionable" the site is your pretty safe, as long as your not stupid enough to give out information about your self.

In order to exploit a flaw a site most use active code, if you have every thing but basic XHTML and CSS disabled, it would be externally hard for a site to automaticly do any thing to you.

The way most people get them selfs "infected" witch is a very relative term sense most of the things people call "viral" are really things they agreed to, they just didn't read the ELUA of something they installed. As a tech I've had people swear up and down they go something from a ad on google... a quick look around add/remove programs and its like ah~ no you are using about 10 ad supported programs.

There are viral ad's and site code out there, but be smart keep ActiveX, Java, Scripts, and flash disabled on sites you don't trust. Clean your cache often, and have cookies auto deleted, only manually keep cookies that you know you want, and don't accept cookies from every site on the Internet. "I mean really didn't your parents teach you not to take cookies from strangers?"

 

[SNGX1275]

Everybody keeps listing the cool features of Opera, but they ALWAYS forget what I think is the coolest...the voice commands. Why are these never brought up?

I've actually never used Voice Commands, presumably the biggest reason is that until recently none of my computers have had a mic. I know they all have a line in, but I've never had a mic (well not since about 98 or 99) now my netbook does, but I've never used it. One thing that was huge for me when I first was using Opera was Mouse Gestures, it was really awesome to hold right mouse, flick left, and have that go back. I hardly use that anymore because my main PC's mouse has a back and forward arrow on it, so I just use those. But back when I just had a Logitec iFeel, mouse gestures were amazingly useful.

 

[Guest]

@burty117
Are you serious? You don't click on main advertisements, or any at all? What kind of paranoid way is that to 'surf'.
Even with your paranoia, someone who says they've never had a virus is a complete ***** - everyone has and will, probably even within a few days of browsing.
You say you don't go to the less popular sites, often they are probably safer than your more popular sites - these types of sites are targetted for iframe droppers, leaving you with a nice browser exploitation (and dirty payload).

Where it is obvious endpoint security's main flaw lies on the common user, browser security is not to be over-estimated, there exists databases of exploits for current or recent versions of the top browsers, and yes, that INCLUDES Opera.