Flock ditching Firefox, moving to GoogleChrome....

Hi malware fighters,

Flock has ceased building on top of the open source Firefox browser, say multiple sources. The next version of the Flock browser will be built on Google’s open source Chrome browser platform. The last version of Flock was released in October 2008.
“Sources say that they’ve become frustrated with Mozilla’s lack of attention to Flock’s needs. One source says Flock felt like the “red headed step child of the Mozilla development community.” Sources are also saying that Flock feels that Google Chrome is far easier to work with than Firefox.”

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/02/flock-ditching-firefox-moving-to-google-chrome/

GoogleChrome has some privacy concerns and lack of extensions like we were accustomed to in previous Flock versions as with Fx. That is why I use SRWare’s Iron, a GoogleChrome clone without the privacy issues of GoogleChrome,

polonus

thanks for posting this, interesting info. just one Q, anyway do you recommend Flock? is not Firefox much more tested and safer because of regular updates?
but I would like to test “Chrome” version of Flock!

Hi Damien,
Does this mean that you’ll no longer be recommending Flock ???
I know in the past this has been one of your favorites.

Well Omid Farhang,

bob3160@
No of course not, bob, flock coders are just top of the bill, and I think they did not decide to go this way easily, and I use SRWare’s Iron every day, and that browser is very secure! So I will certainly give the browser flock build on basis of the GoogleChrome code a try, and then report to you.

Omid@
There are a couple of aspects here that one should consider. Flock was always more secure because it had a rather small adherence, making it less interesting for malcreants. I was into Flock security and these coders were real special, the Belgian coder who started it was a security genius himself. That is why they are seeking to build on GoogleChrome because that is a very difficult browser to compromise and more secure because of the virtual machine inside, as hackers have stated in a recent browser hack contest.

Some smaller av solutions are also more secure than the big ones, because malcreants test their malcode against the big solutions to circumvent detection.

Firefox is a secure browser when special measures are taken like implementing a couple of in-browser security add-ons or extensions, like NoScript, Perpectives, RequestPolicy and Firekeeper, CSP.
In that case it is hardened against all malware script already invented and not detected or developed.
I think the Chrome version of Flock will be out in the third quarter of this year, because the browser has to be ported for other platforms than Windows as well, and they are working on it.
I personally like SRWare’s Iron, a GoogleChrome clone that does not ring home to google so to say, and where some privacy issues were taken out by the developers, because GoogleChrome code is open source and every developer can get the code and build on it.
All browsers have the builders and sponsors interest at heart for Firefox that was google (now they bringing google geolocation in by default for the fx 3.5 and I assure not to find the nearest kebab-restaurant near you, flock had yahoo as one of its beneficiaries, and IE relies heavily on MS, well they have built it deep into their OS, and now with IE8 they will have the same overall location privacy issue by default,

polonus

sorry, I know this question look simple :-[,
but with using Firefox 3.0.10 and addons (NoScript, Perpectives, RequestPolicy, Firekeeper, CSP) installed and run it via Sandboxie for suspicion sites (and without sandboxie for normal usage), am I safe that much that I can be safe when I use SRWare’s Iron?

Hi Omid Farhang,

Well I can almost guarantee that to you. Did you see the bugs and exploit list for firefox and compared that with GoogleChrome /= SRWare’s Iron, Firefox was built on top of older Firefox and that on top of Netscape and inherited the security issues, and these were sometimes regressed (just recently we had such a thing why an extension crashed an update of Firefox). GoogleChrome is newer code that was being build with (more) security in mind, so it was more secure by default from the onset. Top hackers declared that GoogleChrome is the browser that is hardest to hit and exploit.
There are users here with a long experience in the forums like Eddy who has stated time and time over again that Fx wasn’t that secure a browser, because of its legacy. Similar story with the Microsoft code that still has some skeletons hanging in the coding cupboard dating from all the coders that worked on it from Win 95 onwards, when MS was still a DOS machine it was a good and very secure platform.
I think the future for a secure browser would be a browser that you could throw away after a browser session together with all security issues endured during that session. Sandboxie therefore was a good concept, but CSP will offer a solution when every browser will tell the server what is allowed and what is not and every server knows what to expect from the browser and denies what is not strictly in the protocol, but browser users and website owners have to implement this Content Security Policy, so we never know if that is going to be a success on a larger scale, but it would protect largely against malware all sorts,

polonus

Thanks, I feel more secure now with these add-ons!

Hi malware fighters,

Testing the latest flock Sulfur build with all the security add-ons installed, Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009021211 Firefox/3.0.6 Sulfur/2.1a1pre ID:2009021211

So these builds are still build on Mozilla-Gecko

polonus