Why did the 2016 Pwn2Own hacking contest exclude Firefox for lacking security?
I read today, here (http://www.eweek.com/security/pwn2own-hacking-contest-returns-as-joint-hpe-trend-micro-effort.html), that the hacking contest named above excluded Firefox from the contest because they consider Mozilla to be "not serious" about security in 2016. What do they mean? Will Mozilla address this, or is Firefox a dying creature?
All Replies (4)
Mozilla has been very serious about security fixes in Firefox and much more open about it (unlike other browsers) as you can see at https://www.mozilla.org/security/known-vulnerabilities/firefox/
So one could say other browsers were not serious about security if they were hiding things about them over the years.
Hmm people are mistakenly thinking Firefox is too easy or must be lacking and not serious about security now.
Modified by James
there were a limited number of targets at the event - why they were chosen this way, you'd have to inquire at the event's organisers as we cannot speak for them... http://community.hpe.com/t5/Security-Research/Zero-Day-Initiative-announces-Pwn2Own-2016/ba-p/6831571
mozilla is taking security serious of course.
Thank you both for your replies. I've read that Google has pulled its funding of Firefox and recently that Firefox's share of the browser market has dropped as low as twenty percent lately. Reading the comment at the hacking conference made me wonder how healthy Firefox is at this point.
It is not a matter of Google pulling funding but Mozilla wanting to get away from what Google is. So Google is no longer the global default search engine in Firefox. Yahoo has been the default in en-US version of Firefox since 34.0.
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2014/11/19/promoting-choice-and-innovation-on-the-web/