Google Chrome Update Scheme Beats Firefox, Safari, Opera

Google Chrome's automatic, silent update mechanism provides greater security than the update methods used by competing browsers, according to a new study.

The study was conducted by Thomas Duebendorfer of Google Switzerland and Stefan Frei of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), which immediately raises the issue of bias.

However, Google isn't the first technology company to promote its products with statistics, so the involvement of a Google engineer in a study that finds virtue in a Google product shouldn't immediately invalidate the study's findings.

The study examines the update strategies used by Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Opera to keep their browsers patched. Browser updates, of course, figure significantly in browser security. While not every risk is mitigated by browser patches, software vulnerabilities in Web browsers can be significantly reduced by using the most current stable version of a given browser.

With so much malware targeting the browser and Web applications these days, using the most current Web browser has become more important than ever. Yet according to Google, in mid-2008, 45.2% of Internet users visiting Google weren't using the most up-to-date version of their browser.

In the research paper, Duebendorfer and Frei delve into the update mechanisms used by the various browser makers:

To evaluate the effectiveness of these policies, the researchers looked at how many people were using the most current version of the various browsers from the date of a new browser release through three weeks later.

Google Chrome came in first, with 97% of people using the most current version after 21 days. Mozilla Firefox placed second, at 85% after 21 days. Apple Safari came in third, with 53% after 21 days. And Opera, with its manual reinstallation requirement, came in last, with 24% after 21 days.

Microsoft Internet Explorer wasn't included in the test because it only reports the major version number in the user string sent to Web servers, which prevents the tracking of patches over time.

"The often-stated reason for this omission is to reduce information leakage and make it harder for an attacker to select a working exploit for the actual browser version in use," the researchers observed. "As we have seen drive-by download Web sites trying many different exploits at once, it's unclear how much additional protection this omission really gives."

While some might argue that Duebendorfer's goal in participating in this study is to make a case for using Google Chrome, the researchers also have more altruistic motives. They conclude by encouraging browser makers to adopt Google's silent update mechanism, which has been made available in the form of an open source project called Omaha.

Coincidentally, Google Chrome was updated on Tuesday to address two security vulnerabilities.

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