A new study by Accuvant Labs has concluded that the Chrome browser is tops in terms of being secured against exploitation. Of course, since the study was commissioned by Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), readers may want to take it with a grain of salt.

What is interesting though is that the study forgoes traditional metrics such as vulnerability counts, opting instead to examine under-the-hood items such as security architecture and anti-exploitation technology.

The study looked at Chrome 12 and 13, Firefox 5.0.1 and Internet Explorer 9, but does not include changes made to the browsers since. Accuvant says that these three browsers represent 93.4 percent of the market; Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) Safari was skipped presumably due to its smaller market share.

The report offered an excellent overview of various security measures employed by the top browsers today. For example, it was observed that only Chrome implements the full range of tested security measures such as sandboxing, plug-in security architecture and JIT Hardening. Though Internet Explorer also implements these features, the tests performed by Accuvant suggest that they are less comprehensive than Chrome's. These measures are either not implemented in Firefox, or ineffectively implemented.

Chrome was followed closely by Internet Explorer, while Firefox came in at third place.

A report by InformationWeek carried an email response by Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla's director of Firefox engineering. He said that while sandboxing is useful, no one technology is a "silver bullet."

Nightingale wrote: "We invest in security throughout the development process with internal and external code reviews, constant testing and analysis of running code, and rapid response to security issues when they emerge."

The 100+ page report is free and can be accessed here (.pdf).

For more:
- check out this article at InformationWeek
- check out this article at PC Mag

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