Internet Explorer got a black eye last week from a widely exploited zero-day vulnerability, but a recent NSS report shows that IE 9 does a better job of blocking malware than the other major browsers.  It looks like the key to Microsoft’s success is their SmartScreen technology, which basically maintains a blacklist of bad URLs.

https://www.nsslabs.com/reports/your-browser-putting-you-risk-part-1-general-malware-blocking

This flies in the face of conventional wisdom right now, which states that Chrome is the most secure browser.  I don’t think that I will switch from Chrome on my Mac to IE 9 on a VM yet.  But I will feel more comfortable using IE 9 or 10 to browse while I am running a Windows environment.

Further analysis is available here:

http://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/167901115/security/client-security/240008100/internet-explorer-blocks-more-malware-than-firefox-chrome-safari.html

http://m.networkworld.com/news/2012/092712-web-browser-microsoft-security-262850.html?source=NWWNLE_nlt_daily_am_2012-09-28.