Tech Shout!

Firefox users will now have a new plugin in the Firefox browser for Verisign has introduced a new technology that is used to identify trusted Web sites. Also, security firm Secunia has conducted a research that shows that Firefox browser users are more likely to have the most up-to-date security patches installed when compared with users of IE and Opera browsers.

Internet service provider Verisign has released a Firefox plugin that will show the same type of green address bar that is displayed by Internet Explorer 7 when it lands on certain highly trusted Web sites that is Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer (EV SSL) certificates.

Basically, the EV SSL certificates are essentially an antiphishing technology that has been designed to give Web surfers extra information and visual clues when they are visiting secure sites, whose URLs begin with “http://”.

Verisign’s Tim Callan says that more than 500 Web sites, including sites run by eBay Inc.’s PayPal division and ING Groep NV, have now completed EV SSL certification. Nearly 90 percent of them are certified by Verisign, said Callan, a director of product marketing with the company’s SSL group.

That’s an important point because Verisign’s Firefox plugin doesn’t identify sites that are certified by its competitors.

Callan said it would have been too much work to maintain a list of legitimate EV SSL providers. “At that point we’re creating a whole new simultaneous real-time checking system,” he said. “We were willing to invest in this one-off code development, but we didn’t want to inherit this legacy of constantly maintaining this service, especially since this is a stop-gap measure. At the end of the year this will be built into Firefox proper.”

According to a new research, Firefox browser users are more likely to have the most up-to-date security patches installed than users of IE and Opera.

The study was conducted by security firm Secunia, and found that while 5.19% of Firefox 2 users have missed a security update, this figure increases to 9.16% for Internet Explorer 6 users.

However, IE 7 users fared a bit better with just 5.4% found to have missed an update.

According to Mike Cherry, an analyst at the Directions on Microsoft research organization, “People have to choose to use Firefox. Does that automatically pre-select them into a more sophisticated user class that is more likely to install an update?”

Secunia’s research also found that 1.4 million of the most popular computer applications are lacking the relevant security patches, including media players such as Windows Media Player and QuickTime.