Firstly, I have to say I don’t think IE is at all insecure. That’s not because it’s never had a virus, but because browsers can’t have feelings. Insecure just makes a good catchphrase I think, even though I used the word incorrectly.
I stumbled on this blog post today Internet Explorer 8 Still the Best at Staying Safe While Browsing the Web. IE added a feature a while back that checks the website being requested (the URL / URI) against a known database before it loads that in the browser. According to the website above that feature caused 560 million blocks last year or 3 million blocks a day, so it prevents people from getting a virus 3 million times a day. That’s pretty impressive.
Now, that’s not exactly the cure I have to say. Blocking websites that gives IE virus’ is not a patch to permanently prevent a virus. The cure is to fix their code, however being realistic, the site blocking feature is just another layer of security. You can’t catch all the bugs all the time and a feature like this adequately allows the IE team time to develop a fix and still prevent any given site from causing the entire internet turning into a botnet.
Kudos to you MS for providing such a feature, though do be sure to keep the patches coming.
