RE: New Paper: More than 600 million users surf at high risk

--On July 1, 2008 3:31:32 PM -0400 Larry Seltzer <larry_at_larryseltzer.com>
wrote:

> From your paper:
>
>>> It is noteworthy that it has taken 19 months since the initial general
> availability of IE7 (public release October 2006) to reach 52.5%
> proliferation amongst users that navigate the Internet with Microsoft's
> Web browser. Meanwhile, 92.2% of Firefox users have migrated to FF2.
>
> Could this be due to the fact that Mozilla stops supporting, and issuing
> updates for old versions just a few months after the release of a new
> one?
>

My completely non-scientific, unsupported-by-empirical-evidence answer is
no. It's because people who use Firefox tend to be more aware of security
threats and the need to keep software up to date. It could also be (at
least in part) because Firefox has a built-in, enabled-by-default, update
available warning system.

Paul Schmehl (pauls_at_utdallas.edu)
Senior Information Security Analyst
The University of Texas at Dallas
http://www.utdallas.edu/ir/security/