Study Shows Chrome is #1 for Security!

**HunkyLuke** · 12-10-2011, 05:03 PM

Security firm Accuvant released a 102-page report yesterday that ranked Google Chrome as the #1 mainstream browser for security, ahead of 2nd place Internet Explorer and last place Firefox.

The evaluation compared exploit mitigations, malicious link detection, and other safety features that the 3 major browsers offered. All three browsers tested were run on Windows 7.

One point of focus was each browser's "security sandbox", meant to protect the Windows OS from functions that parse JavaScript, images and other web content. "We found that Google Chrome did the most sandboxing. It restricted the movements more than any other browser. Internet Explorer came up a close second because it implemented a sandbox where you could do certain things but you were allowed to do more things than you could in Chrome. Lastly, Firefox came in last because it didn't implement a sandbox yet." Check the attached graph for a comparison of sandboxing.

Chrome also topped IE and Firefox in several other categories (see second graph). They also released more than 20MB worth of data, software tools, and methodology so peers may review or build upon the research. You can find that at http://gay.gl/h3

On the same note, Chrome has emerged unscathed during the annual "Pwn2Own" hacker contest for three years in a row, something no other browser entered has done. Reports of in-the-wild exploits that target the browser are also extremely rare.