Combine the lack of Google Toolbar support, along with missing a number of my Firefox extensions I’ve become dependent on and I just couldn’t make the full switch.

My friend said he felt the same way, but forced himself to use it for awhile and see if he could be productive without the extensions. He decided the speed increases in the browser were worth the lack of extensions. He still has Firefox installed on his machine, but it’s not his default browser. He uses Firefox when he needs to use one of his extensions.

I’m not sure I notice a huge speed increase on most sites, but as to be expected, Google sites do load significantly faster in my opinion. What I started to become more curious about was which browser had less of a processor footprint on the machine while running.

I decided to open the same page in each browser and then take a look at the memory and CPU usage for each in Windows Task Manager. Here are the results:

• Firefox 3.0: 04 CPU / 181,020 K Memory
• Internet Explorer 8: 00 CPU / 85,080 K Memory
• Google Chrome: 00 CPU / 27,300 K Memory

The results weren’t really shocking. I expected Firefox to be heavy because of all the extensions I’m using. Chrome would be light because there’s nothing running but the browser itself. IE8 sits in the middle.

I’ll keep playing with Chrome, but I still don’t see it replacing Firefox for me anytime soon.

Post from: EveryJoe

IE8, Firefox 3 and Chrome Processor Overhead

Turns out, you are better off logging out all accounts even at home.

I recently read somewhere that the Internet Explorer 8 is getting ready to protect users from clickjacking attacks. A little digging, and I found a lot of literature on this subtle attack called CSRF that is being dubbed “the sleeping giant” of web vulnerabilities.

Cross-site Request Forgery
Suppose Alice closed her bank page without logging out and that the session is still alive. Now she opens an apparently harmless webpage but with a tiny obscure image referring to a “post” page of bank. That is, the page that is executed after the confirmation, the page where the actual transaction takes place.

While Alice is going through that apparently harmless webpage, a transaction is being executed on her behalf.

This kind of attack where a part of one site cross-refers a different site is cross-site request forgery.

Now, the above explanation is a very simplified version. In reality, bank sessions are more secure, but the CSRF done is equivalently more subtle and cunning. It is a good thing that most banks expire sessions automatically after a few minutes of idleness.

Clickjacking
ClickJacking is a term which encompasses multiple techniques that can be used to trick the user into unwittingly clicking an obscured or hidden web element, usually resulting in an unwanted transaction.

Read more about Clickjacking, about what IE8 is doing to defend users against Clickjacking, and about the CSRF.

One way to be on guard is to use different browsers or browser profiles for normal browsing activity and activity where logins are necessary.

Post from: EveryJoe

Why Log Off Your Accounts?