Posted on 08/26/2005 6:31:03 PM PDT by Bush2000
Firefox's 'retreat' ensures Microsoft excels
Open source web browser Firefox has lost the momentum it has steadily gained since it was unleashed last year, according to Web analysts at Net Applications.
The online portal’s unique Hit List service reveals a slump in the Mozilla browser’s market share, falling from 8.7% to 8.1 % in July.
Coinciding with its demise, was the advance of Microsoft's IE that has gained some of the ground surrendered in June, climbing back from 86.6 % to 87.2% last month.
The revival for the dominant browser comes on the back of average monthly losses of between .5 to 1% for Redmond, as Firefox started to gain acceptance among a wider audience than just tech-savvy users.
When asked by Contractor UK whether Microsoft’s sudden gains were from the unveiling of a new IE, Net Applications said a re-launch tends revive industry interest, and could have bolstered Microsoft’s market share of the browser market.
When a company launches a new product, there is always renewed interest in what the company has produced and it would also be fair to say that this may have had an effect, said a member of the Hit List team.
Although, there have been browser issues with Windows 2000 in the news, so it is possible that again you may see a dip [in Microsoft’s market share]. Right now, people are looking for security and whenever there are issues with the security of one's system, they will use what they feel will be the most secure.”
Besides Net Applications, web developer site W3 Schools, confirms that adoption of Firefox is falling, just as IE is reaching its highest share of the market in 2005.
According to W3's data on specialist users, Microsoft IE (6) enjoyed a 67.9% share in July, improving to 68.1% in August matched against Firefox’s top share of 21% in May, which has now dropped to 19.8% for the last two months.
Observers noted that both sets of analysis concur that Microsoft’s loss, up until now, has been Firefox’s gain, but over the last month roles have reversed.
Security fears concerning Mozilla and its browser product have recently emerged, coinciding with Microsoft’s high-profile trumpeting of its new safer browser product (IE 7), complete with glossy logo.
Experts at Net Applications said they were surprised at Firefox’s sudden retreat, saying they expected a slow down before any decline.
Yet they told CUK: “Whenever there may be problems with security, there always is a decline with users changing browsers.”
Data from the Web analytics company is based on 40,000 users, gleaned from their global internet operations, prompting some commentators to question the so-called ‘global decline’ in the Firefox market share.
The Counter.com reportedly finds that between June and July, Firefox actually increased its share by two points, and overtook IE5 for the first time ever.
The Web Standard Project suggests webmasters should treat data from web analysis providers with caution, before rushing to make service changes.
So what can we conclude?” asks the WSP, a grass roots project fighting for open access to web technologies.
“Not much: Mozilla-based browsers are probably used by just under 10% of the web audience and their share is growing slowly. IE5.x is probably used by somewhat less than that and its share is declining slowly. IE6 is roughly holding steady.”
Meanwhile, Spread Firefox, which measures actual download rates of the browser, reports that it took just one month for the Mozilla Foundation’s showpiece to reach 80 million downloads in August – from its July total of 70 million.
At the time of writing, Firefox had been downloaded 80701444 times, meaning adoption rates of over 10m occurred one month after Net Applications says Firefox bolted in light of the dominant IE.
The bet was I give you a table of windows hashes. I get to set the password policy not you.
However, if you really want to do that. I'll agree, but your linux hash table has to have passwords that conform to the same standard (which includes the salt). So if the salt is 8 characters the password needs to be no more than 6 characters.
So you set the password policy far beyond that which is used by almost all organizations, something rarely found in practice, to get something that Rainbow Crack can't crack. Sorry, I'm not interested in something that unrealistic.
but your linux hash table has to have passwords that conform to the same standard (which includes the salt).
Again unrealistic. An organization sets password policy across the board. We go on what the users type in. The toughest I've ever had to use was 12 characters, no dictionary, at least two numbers and at least two special characters (!@#$%^&*()-_+=~`[]{}|\:;"'<>,.?/). Sorry, you can't crack that in modern *NIX, but you can in Windows.
You tried to backdoor your bet, but you got caught.
It amazes me that you can't read at least 2 if not 5 posts made by me in this thread where I admit Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
How many more times do I need to say that for you to read it? Well obviously 2 isn't enough.
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
Linux allows users to have a shorter password and remain as secure as Windows
How is that. Can you read it now?
Ok, so let me see we are talking about Linux but then you throw in Mac. And then a little Unix at times. What next? Solaris?
Ok, so combine all three systems and and you get something that can compete with windows. I'll admit that to, so don't ask me a million times to admit it later. Here let me make it easy on you.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
When you combine the best features of Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Solaris you get a better system than Windows overall.
this just proves you don't know jack. What makes a decent password is one that can't be broken--not the one that most people use.
In the past it was impractical to break 7 character passwords, but as computers advanced password standards have become more complex. Linux using salting allows them to keep the old standard (shorter less complex passwords) instead of requiring the user to us a longer more complex password. Once again giving the user a better password experience. It's that's simple, you don't even know when to shut up on your point. I've admitted this time and time again, but yet you just keep on going and going and going in circles and switching topics and points. It's a good thing GW doesn't take debate class from you, or we'd have President Gore or Kerry right now.
Let's just follow one of the biggest users of Microsoft technology. I'll pick a branch of the Military and use their standard. That would be realistic, right?
Also if you want realistic scenarios only, I guess this bet is off because it assumes that Linux is being used as a desktop throughout the enterprise..an even more unrealistic possibility.
I see you continue to fail to admit it, preferring to go off on tangents. I guess it doesn't matter, because what you think has no bearing on the fact that Windows passwords are cryptographically relatively weak because Microsoft decided not to do what the computer industry had known was a good thing for over two decades -- salting hashes. Salts make a weak password stronger, and make a strong password too impractical to break with current technology.
I'll pick one currently in Army use right now on thousands of Windows and some UNIX systems in an environment that ranges from FOUO to TS: 10 characters, no dictionary, minumums: two uppercase, two lowercase, two numbers, two symbols (picked from any found on a standard keyboard).
Rainbow Crack will break all of them with a 99.9% probability. The RC screen output here (notice the very strong passwords) has it cracking longer passwords than that. In fact, it cracked ten of them in under six minutes. No table big enough exists to crack those passwords on a modern *NIX.
Sure, what I'm talking about applies to all modern *NIX systems. They deprecated Crypt() and a two-character salt long ago, once they realized that computer technology was getting close to the point where it could be broken. They realized that it was a security concern and did something about it. The technology is already here, and Microsoft has done nothing (unless Vista is better).
Sure, how about this:
Even a relatively long, hard password exceeding most guidelines for password security is breakable in Windows, yet secure in *NIX.
Nobody suggested password lengths go down when *NIX moved from Crypt() with a two-character salt to MD5 with an eight-character salt. The password requirements remained the same so security could go up.
The idea of being able to use a shorter password with *NIX never even occured to me. Only a Microsoftie would see something like this and think "Gee, now I can use a shorter password." instead of "Wow, my current password length now gives me better security."
I have to admit, the security mindset of many of its users is one of the problems Windows endures.
Salting is a simple common practice in cryptography that was in place long before Microsoft made NT. Microsoft's inability to follow common practice simply resulted in another weak link in the security chain.
So, tell us, given a Windows box with EFS installed and 14+ character passwords, how long is it going to take you to crack the passwords?
Okay, exactly how many systems out there does that apply to? I've already told you what Rainbow Crack can crack, and it applies to all but a tiny fraction of home, corporate and government Windows systems out there. That is a security problem.
Quit reaching for straws, you know what I mean. I'm trying to save typing since I have to do it over and over and over for you guys. Look back, I've used qualifiers showing that I mean breakable in a practical sense, either by the time it would take to do a computational brute-force or the disk space it would take to hold a lookup table.
Yes it is.
Look, you lied.
Nope. What I just found wasn't as favorable to Classic as the one I was originally referring to (that was run on a 512MB box, kicking the VM performance advantage more). To paraphrase, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and benchmarks.
don't encompass the impact of running both Classic and standard OS X applications simultaneously.
Running multiple apps hurts the performance of any one app? Wow Bush, what a new concept!
In other words, contrary to your opinion earlier, the Mac as it currently exists ain't the "best platform"
I guess you're now talking about the hardware it sits on instead of the OS. Make up your mind. Current PPC chips are definitely good enough into the near future (and upgrades are planned before the MacTels hit), but they don't have a long-term future.
The advantage of having multiple suppliers (Intel and AMD) is that competition can reign; in other words, it brings out the best.
Gotta love it. We win in the end, no matter what platform we're on.
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