Symantec fesses up, admits tests were slanted

Started by news, Mar 12 06 07:08

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Last September security software vendor Symantec issued a report claiming  [a href="http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/20/1359203&tid=172"]Internet Explorer had fewer critical flaws than Firefox[/a] and thus was more secure. Well, it seem they have now [a href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/cmp/20060308/tc_cmp/181501722;_ylt=AhJkTGJ9tXH5Y5Q8lrKhf1kjtBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--"]rethought that position and admitted the tests were biased.[/a]

'How we did it before wasn't a fair comparison,' said Oliver Friedrichs, the senior manager of Symantec's security response group. 'It wasn't an apples to apples comparison.'

The key was vendor acknowledged critical vulnerabilities. Thus, if Microsoft  didn't agree it was critical a critical bug, then it didn't get counted.

Example:

Symantec: Internet Explorer feasted on my childs bones.

Microsoft: We don't consider that critical.