Internet Explorer 9 blocks 99% of malware

Studies this year have shown that users are four times more likely to be exploited by downloading and executing malicious malware as as result of a social engineering or spam attack, than they are to be remotely compromised by an application exploit.

The European Union reported in 2011 that almost one-third of Internet users in Europe were the victims of malware infections during 2010, despite the majority having security software installed. The worst offender was Bulgaria with a staggering 58% infection rate. Western European nations like France and Spain reported rates of 40%. Europe, however, is relatively healthy when compared with Asia-Pacific nations. China reportedly has an infection rate of over 70% and Japan almost 60%.

As a result of this severe and growing problem, browser vendors are devoting increased resources to detecting and blocking such attacks. A recent NSS labs evaluation of IE9, Chrome 12 and Firefox 4 shows that Microsoft, whose business strategy relies on maintaining its large share of the enterprise market, have made a significant breakthrough in Internet Explorer 9. During tests, it blocked over 99% of threats, compared to less than 8% for Firefox.

Internet Explorer 9 combines the SmartScreen URL Reputation technique from IE8 with a new layer of protection – Application Reputation. Whilst SmartScreen maintains a blacklist of known or suspected malware sites, the Application Reputation service is the opposite – a white or graylist of known good files.

Windows Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) caught an exceptional 99.2% of live threats: 96% with the SmartScreen URL reputation and an additional 3.2% with Application Reputation. URL Reputation, which is included in IE8, and Application Reputation, which is new to IE9, are the two components that make up IE9’s SmartScreen Filter. IE9 with SmartScreen offers the best protection of any browser against socially engineered malware. Protection against malware matched our previous findings from the Q2 2011 European test and Q3 2010 global test as well as the Q3 2011 Asia-Pacific test.

Google Chrome 12 caught 13.2% of the live threats, considerably more than the 3% observed during the Q3 2010 global test. This improvement tracks to an enhancement in SafeBrowsing so that, according to Google, “Chrome now warns you before downloading some types of malicious files”.

Apple Safari 5 caught 7.6% of the live threats. Protection offered was near identical to that of Firefox.

Mozilla Firefox 4 caught 7.6% of the live threats, far fewer than Internet Explorer 9. Results were 11.4% less than the 19% protection rate observed in our Q3 2010 global test, indicating an overall drop in protection for Firefox.

Opera 11 caught 6.1% of the live threats, providing considerably less protection against socially-engineered malware than the other browsers tested.

The full NSS Labs report, with details of their test setup and conclusions can be downloaded here.