this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
96 points (99.0% liked)
Technology
37754 readers
284 users here now
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.
Subcommunities on Beehaw:
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
0-days that we know of
There definitely are 0-days in every major browser engines.
As a matter of fact, Mozilla is probably working on a 0-day breach that haven’t been published by security watchdogs yet.
In the meantime, that particular WebKit breach has already been patched.
There’s no point skipping places when everything is on fire. The only thing you can do is going where it’s safer on average and stay there.
Of course there are unreleased 0-days, but you can't do anything about it. Most of them are even kept secret by companies that sell spy software. However, public 0-days are way more dangerous because they are being exploited actively.
Using a different browser until a particular issue is fixed when you are e.g. a journalist still helps with getting hacked.
And that's exactly my point.
Actually no. Because you never know what currently unfixed 0-day is actively exploited in any browser. Using Gecko or Chromium today because Webkit had a security flaw yesterday doesn't make anything safer. It might comfort you, but that's it.
The only important metric is the number of 0-day discovered per year per engine. It's a matter of probability.
Changing engine would be like changing dice because you had a bad number, without knowing how many side you'll get with the new ones.
Ah, now I got what you meant. I was just suggesting switching temporarily while the published 0-day would be public and unpatched, because this is the time in which the issue would be exploited the most.